LITTER (through O. Fr. litere or litiere, mod. litiere from Med.

See also:

• LAT

Lat. lectaria, classical lectica, lectus,

See also:

• BED
• BED (a common Teutonic word, cf. German Bett, probably connected with the Indo-European root bhodh, seen in the Lat. fodere, to dig; so " a dug-out place " for safe resting, or in the same sense as a garden " bed ")

bed,

See also:

• COUCH, DARIUS NASH (1822-1897)

couch)  , a word used of a portable couch, shut in by curtains and borne on poles by bearers, and of a bed of straw or other suitable substance for animals; hence applied to the number of young produced by an animal at one birth, and also to any disordered heap of waste material, rubbish, &c . In ancient Greece, prior to the influence of Asiatic luxury after the Macedonian conquest, the litter (gope.ov) was only used by invalids or by women . The Romans, when the lectica was introduced, probably about the latter half of the 2nd century B.C . (Gellius x . 3), used it only for travelling purposes . Like the Greek or Asiatic litter, it had a roof of skin (pellis) and side curtains (vela, plagae) . Juvenal (iv . 2o) speaks of transparent sides (latis specularibus) . The slaves who bore the litter on their shoulders (succollare) were termed lecticarii, and it was a sign of luxury and wealth to employ six or even eight bearers . Under the Empire the litter began to be used in the streets of Rome, and .its use was restricted and granted as a privilege (Suet . Claudius) . The travelling lectica must be distinguished from the much earlier lectica funebris or feretrunz, the funeral bier on which the dead were carried to their burial-place .