CANCELLI
CANCELLI (
κιγκλίδες,
δρύφακτοι), a screen or lattice of open work,
placed before a window, a doorway, the tribunal of a judge, or any other
place. At Athens, in the senate-house (
βουλευτήριον) and law-courts,
δρύφακτοι were the bar or fixed partition,
κιγκλίδες the gates opening into it (
αἱ μὲν οὖν τῶν δικαστηρίων θύραι κιγκλίδες ἐκαλοῦντο, ἃς
Π̓ωμαῖοι καγκελλωτὰς λέγουσιν, Poll. 8.124). Balconies
projecting from the fronts of houses were also called
δρύφακτοι, Lat.
maeniana (Heracl.
Pont. fr. 10, with Müller's note, 2.209;
τὰ
τῶν οἰκοδομημάτων ἐξέχοντα ξύλα, Schol.
Aristoph. Kn. 672,
Vesp.
385; this sense is not noticed in L. and S., ed. 7). The material was
originally wood, as the name
δρύφακτος
shows (L. and S. s. v.); and such were also the
cancelli put up at Rome for temporary purposes, as when funeral
games were given in the Forum (
cancelli fori,
Cic.
pro Sest. 58.124; cf.
Ov. Am. 3.2,
64).
But they might also be in metal, as in the
cancelli before the Temple of Vesta, rebuilt by Severus,
conjecturally restored by Comm. Lanciani from existing remains, and figured
here from Middleton (p. 184); or in marble, as
 |
|
Cancelli before the Temple of Vesta. (From Middleton.)
|
those on the Rostra from a relief on the Arch of Constantine,
figured under
ROSTRA In the
Basilica Julia, low marble screens or
cancelli
shut in the otherwise open arches on the ground-floor; a great number of
fragments of these screens are scattered about the Forum (ib. p. 172). For
the
cancelli of law-courts see further
Cic. in Verr. 3.59, §
135, with Long's note; and compare Varr.
R. R. 3.5;
Dig. 30,
41, s. 10; 33, 7,
s. 10.
Hence was derived the word
Cancellarius, which
originally signified a porter, who stood at the latticed or grated door of
the emperor's palace. The Emperor Carinus gave great dissatisfaction by
promoting one of his Cancellarii to be Praefectus urbi (Vopisc.
Carin. 16). The cancellarius also signified a legal
scribe or secretary, who sat within the cancelli or lattice-work, by which
the crowd was kept off from the tribunals of the judges (Cassiod.
Var. 11.6). The chief scribe or secretary was called
Cancellarius
κατ᾽ ἐξοχήν, and was
eventually invested with judicial power at Constantinople; but an account of
his duties and the history of this office do not fall within the scope of
the present work. From this word has come the modern Chancellor.
[
W.S] [
W.W]
