Cippus
1.
Originally the trunk of a tree with its branches lopped off, left standing in the ground as
a stump, or else stuck in the ground. The cippus was sometimes sharpened to a point, and thus
used in fortification as a sort of
chevaux-de-frise (
B.
G. vii. 73).
2.
A low column of stone, sometimes round, but oftener rectangular, and used (
a) as a mark of the division of land by the
agrimensores (q. v.);
and (
b) as a sepulchral monument, many of these having been exhumed. The
illustration here given shows a cippus contained in the Townley collection in the British
Museum, and erected to the memory of one Viria Primitiva.
On several cippi are found the letters T. T. L.; that is,
Sit tibi terra
levis, whence Persius says,
Non levior cippus nunc imprimit ossa
(
Sat. i. 37).
It was also usual to place at one corner of the burying-ground a cippus, on which the
extent of
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Sepulchral Cippus. (British Museum.)
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the burying-ground was marked, along the road (
in fronte), and
backward to the fields (
in agrum) (
Hor.
Sat. i. 8, 12, 13). See
Sepulcrum.
