Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Repagula

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. 

REPA'GULA. Plural. One of the contrivances adopted by the ancients as a door fastening (Cic. Div. i. 34.), the precise nature of which must at this day be collected from inferential reasoning, rather than positive testimony. As the word only occurs in the plural, we may conclude that the device consisted of a double fastening, and not a single one; while the expression of Plautus (Cist. iii. 18.), occludite pessulis, repagulis, leads to the conjecture that it consisted of a pair of bolts (pessuli), made of wood and fastened on the leaves of a folding door (Plin. H. N. xvi. 82.), but made to shoot against one another from opposite sides, which seems to be the true meaning of the definition given by Verrius, (ap. Fest. s. v.) repagula, quae patefaciundi gratia ita figuntur, ut e contrario oppanguntur. The annexed illustration (Repagula/1.1), representing an Egyptian door, from a painting at Thebes, which shows the two bolts affixed to separate valves, and shooting from opposite sides against each other, confirms this account so far as to encourage the belief that it really exhibits the contrivance in question. Indeed it is from the Egyptians that both Greeks and Romans appear to have derived the models for most of their locks, keys, and fastenings in general.

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  Repagula/1.1