Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Patella

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. 

PATEL'LA. Diminutive of PATINA; consequently, resembling that vessel in form, with the exception of being smaller or shallower. It was used in the kitchen as a cooking utensil (Mart. v. 78. Varro, ap. Prisc. vi. 681.), and in the dining-room as a dish for the viands brought to table (Mart. xiii. 81. Juv. v. 85.). The ordinary kinds were made of earthenware, the more costly of metal and elaborate workmanship; and also of different relative sizes, conformable to the use for which they were intended; hence we find the word, though itself a diminutive, accompanied with epithets descriptive of very different dimensions; as, exigua, modica, lata, grandis. Juv. l. c. Hor. Ep. i. 5. 2. Mart. l. c. Cic. Verr. ii. 4. 21.

2. Patella Cumana. A dish of the nature last described, but made of earthenware, and consequently of a common description. Mart. xiv. 114. Compare Juv. vi. 343.

3. A dish of the form and character above described, in which solid viands were offered as a feast to the gods, as contradistinguished from the patera, which held liquids only. (Festus, s. v. Varro, ap. Non. s. v. p. 544.) A person would have been regarded as highly irreligious who appropriated one of these dishes to the service of his own dinner table. Cic. Fin. ii. 7.