CARRU´CA
CARRU´CA a carriage used in imperial times, and
first mentioned by Pliny (
H.N. 33.140). Like the reda [
REDA], it was a travelling carriage
on four wheels, whence Martial in one place (3.47) uses the words as
synonymous. Nero is said to have travelled with 500 (Lamprid.
Heliog. 31) or even 1000 carrucae (
Suet. Nero 30). These carriages were sometimes used in Rome by
persons of distinction, like the carpenta [
CARPENTUM], in which case they appear to have been
covered with plates of bronze, silver, and even gold, which were sometimes
ornamented with embossed work (Plin.
l.c.). Martial
(
3.72) speaks of an
aurea
carruca which cost the value of a farm; and Alexander Severus
allowed senators at Rome to use carrucae and redae plated with silver
(Lamprid.
Alex. Sev. 43). These are the
carrucae argentatae, the use of which within Rome spread in
the course of the third century from the high officials, to whom they were
at first limited, to private persons (Vopisc.
Aurelian. 46;
Amm. Marc. 14.6; Cod. Theod. 14.12, 1; Cod.
Just. 11.19). We have no representations of
carriages in ancient works of art which can be safely said to be carrucae;
but we have several representations of carriages ornamented with plates of
metal. (See Inghirami,
Monum. Etrusch. 3.18, 23; Millingen,
Uned. Mon. 2.14.) Carrucae were also used for carrying
women, and were then, as well perhaps as in other cases, drawn by mules
(
Dig. 34, tit. 2, s. 13: ins. 11 a
carruca dormitoria is mentioned); whence Ulpian
(
Dig. 21, tit. 1, s. 38.8) speaks of
mulae carrucariae.
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