Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Epistylium

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rich, Anthony (1849). The illustrated companion to the Latin dictionary, and Greek lexicon. p. vi. OCLC 894670115. https://archive.org/details/illustratedcompa00rich. 

EPISTYL'IUM (ἐπιστύλιον). Properly, a Greek word adopted by the Roman architects to designate the architrave or main beam laid horizontally over the capitals of a column, from one to the other, in order to form a continuous bed for a superstructure to rest upon. When the architrave was made of timber, it was properly called trabs; when of stone or marble, epistylium, though that word, as a general term, may with equal correctness be applied to both. (Vitruv. iii. 5. 11. Varro, R. R. iii. 5. 11. Festus, s. v.) The example (Epistylium/1.1), from a tomb sculptured in the rock at Beni Hassan, explains the original use and early application of the epistylium to columnar architecture. In this instance it has no other members over it; merely forming a connecting surface for the roof (tectum) to rest upon; but the next engraving shows its finished state as one of the principal members of an entablature.

2. Epistylia; in the plural, the epistyles; which comprise the whole superstructure (Epistylium/2.1) above the abacus of a column, forming what our architects term collectively the entablature, otherwise divided by them into three distinct members; the architrave (trabs, or epistylium) at bottom; the frieze (zophorus) next above; and the cornice over all, for which the Romans had no collective name, but always described it by enumerating the separate members which it contained. See CORONA, 15.

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  Epistylium/1.1
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  Epistylium/2.1