Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Popa

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. 

POPA (θύτης). The minister who conducted a victim to the altar, and knocked it down with a mallet, or with the bluff side of an axe, as contradistinguished from the cultrarius, who dispatched it with the sacrificial knife. He wore a short apron or kilt from the waist to the knees (whence styled succinctus. Suet., Cal. 32. Prop. iv. 3. 62.); the upper part of his person being naked, as in the annexed example (Popa/1.1) from a Roman bas-relief. The manner of giving the blow is shown by the illustration s. VICTIMARII.

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