Online Encyclopedia

LITTER (through O. Fr. litere or liti...

Online Encyclopedia
Originally appearing in Volume V16, Page 792 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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LITTER (through O. Fr. litere or litiere, mod. litiere from Med.
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Lat. lectaria, classical lectica, lectus, bed, couch)
  , a word used of a portable couch, shut in by curtains and borne on poles by bearers, and of a bed of
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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
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Greece, prior to the influence of
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Asiatic luxury after the Macedonian
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conquest, the litter (gope.ov) was only used by invalids or by
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women . The Romans, when the lectica was introduced, probably about the latter
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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
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bore the litter on their shoulders (succollare) were termed lecticarii, and it was a sign of luxury and
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wealth to employ six or even eight bearers . Under the
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Empire the litter began to be used in the streets of Rome, and .its use was restricted and granted as a
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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
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burial-place .

End of Article: LITTER (through O. Fr. litere or litiere, mod. litiere from Med. Lat. lectaria, classical lectica, lectus, bed, couch)
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