LATER
LATER
dim. LATE´RCULUS (
πλίνθος,
dim.
πλινθίς, πλινθίον), a brick. Besides the
Greeks and Romans, other ancient nations employed brick for building to a
great extent, especially the Babylonians (
Hdt.
179;
Xen. Anab. 3.4, §
§ 7, 11; Nahum 3.14) and Egyptians. In the latter country a
painting on the walls of a tomb at Thebes (Wilkinson's
Manners and
Customs, vol. ii. p. 99) exhibits slaves, in one part employed
in procuring water, in mixing, tempering, and carrying the clay, or in
turning the bricks out of the mould [
FORMA], and arranging them in order on the ground to be dried by
the sun, and in another part carrying the dried bricks by means of the yoke
[
ASILLA]. In the annexed
woodcut we see a man with three bricks suspended from each end of the yoke,
and beside him another who returns from having deposited his load.
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Egyptian brick-makers. (From Thebes.)
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These figures are selected from the above-mentioned painting, being in fact
original portraits of two
Αἰγύπτιοι
πλινθοφόροι, girt with linen round the loins in exact accordance
with the description given of them by Aristophanes, who at the same time
alludes to all the operations in the process of brick-making (
πλινθοποιΐα, Schol.
in
Pind. O. 5.20), which are exhibited in the
Theban painting. (
Aves, 1132-1152; Schol.
ad loc.）
The clay was carried in shovels (
ἀμαὶ) and
placed in troughs (
λεκάναι), to be
manipulated there and moistened with water (for which the word
ὀργάζω is used).
It is necessary to distinguish the sun-dried bricks, which were used in the
earliest times, from the baked bricks. The word
later is strictly a sun-dried or unburnt brick, whereas
testa is kiln-baked brick; so the word
lateritius means, made of crude or sun-dried bricks,
testaceus made of burnt bricks, and
wherever no qualifying word is used this distinction will usually be
observed, but the former are also termed
lateres
crudi, the latter
lateres cocti or
coctiles, and similarly
πλίνθοι ὠμαὶ and
πλίνθοι ὀπταί;
πλίνθος being strictly a sun-dried rectangular brick (whence
the word is used for shape independently of material). Babylonian brickwork
is partly of sun-dried bricks with a thin layer of reeds between each
course; but it appears from the remains that the walls were originally faced
with burnt bricks. These bricks are found bearing the name of
Nebuchadnezzar. (Layard, p. 406; Rawlinson on Herod. Book iii., Appendix.)
Egyptian bricks were generally sun-dried, and many of the burnt bricks found
in Egypt are Roman. The dry climate probably made them last better than in
damper countries.
[p. 2.9]Usually the proportion of length to
width is 2 to 1; of length to thickness, 3 to 1. In length they vary from
about 1 foot to 17 inches. (See Birch,
Ancient Pottery, vol.
i.) The Greeks used only crude or sun-dried bricks down to the time of the
Roman conquest, or at any rate till after Alexander (Birch, 1.158). As an
instance may be mentioned the temple of Demeter at Lepreon (
Paus. 5.5.6). Pausanias (
2.18.150) speaks of baked bricks in a temple at Argos, but that
is conjectured to be of Macedonian or Roman date. Marquardt
(
Privatleben, 636) cites the Philippeum at Olympia (
Paus. 5.20.10) as the earliest dated building
in Greece of baked brick (B.C. 337): but Blümner denies this upon
the evidence of the recent German excavators at Olympia, who informed him
that in all the remains of the Philippeum there was no trace of baked brick
(Blümner,
Technologie, 2.16). Walls of Greek cities
were generally of stone, but instances of sun-dried brick walls can be found
in Pausanias,
8.8.7 (of Mantinea), and the
birds in Aristophanes built their wall of this material (Arist.
Aves, 1136). Their partial use for dwelling-houses,
especially of the poorer classes, is mentioned in Xenophon,
Xen. Mem. 3.1,
7.
Roman bricks were crude till the end of the Republic (Varro, ap. Non. s. v.
suffundatum;
Cic. de Div. 2.4. 7, 99):
the use of baked brick probably became more common as houses of more stories
were built, but they were only used for facing. Vitruvius (
2.3) seems to speak solely of
lateres crudi, for he does not mention the triangular bricks
found in existing walls at all. The earliest baked bricks are found in the
Rostra (B.C. 44), and even in the time of Augustus crude bricks only were
used, of which none remain. The baked Roman bricks are of various
colours--red, yellow, more rarely brown, some of red pozzolana mixed with
clay, as in the Flavian palace on the Palatine (Middleton's
Rome). Their thickness varies from 1 in. to 1 3/4 in. The
commonest size is 15 inches long and 14 wide. Those in the “palace of
Constantine” at Treves are 15 inches square and 1 1/4 thick.
Vitruvius (who, as mentioned above, seems to be treating only of crude
bricks) states that spring was the best time for brick-making, for those
made in summer were apt to dry unequally and crack, and they should be kept
two years before being used. He speaks of three shapes: the Lydian, 1 1/2
(Roman) feet long and a foot broad; the pentadoron, five palms square; and
the tetradoron, four palms (
Vitr. 2.3). Pliny
(
Plin. Nat. 35.49) mentions some which
were so porous and light that they floated in water. Blümner states
that the same kind of brick was made at Nuremberg in the 14th and 15th
centuries and was called
Schwammstein. As regards the baked
Roman bricks, we find them stamped at Rome in the 2nd century A.D.: but in other parts of Italy the stamped
bricks are found earlier. These stamps have a figure of some god or animal,
as a trade-mark, encircled by the name of the brick-maker, sometimes of the
consul also, and, in the case of bricks made by soldiers, of the legion to
which they belong. As the Roman armies brought their brick-making art with
them wherever they went, we can trace in some instances the movements of a
legion by the brick-stamps. For the methods of building with bricks, see
MURUS and PARIES; and for further information about their
manufacture and history, see Birch,
Ancient Pottery;
Blümner,
Technologie, 2.16.
[
J.Y] [
G.E.M]
