Cophĭnus
（
κόφινος). A large wicker basket, made of willow branches.
From Aristophanes (
Av. 1310) it would seem that it was used by the Greeks as a basket or
cage for birds. The Romans used it for agricultural purposes; and Columella, in describing a
method of procuring early cucumbers, says that they should be sown in well-manured soil, kept
in a cophinus, so that in this case we have to consider it as a kind of portable hot-bed.
Juvenal (iii. 14), when speaking
 |
|
Copia. (Naples.)
|
of the Jews, uses the expression
cophinus et foenum (a truss of
hay), figuratively to designate their high degree of poverty. See
Corbis.
