Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Tela

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. 

TE'LA (ἱστός and ἱστός ὄρφιος). A weaver's loom. (Ov. Met. vi. 576.) The earliest looms, and those most common amongst the Romans, were upright ones, such as are still used at the Gobelin's manufactory, in India for making tapestry, and in Iceland. The illustration (Tela/1.1) represents an Egyptian loom from a painting in the tombs, slightly restored on one of the sides, which had suffered in the original; but exhibiting most distinctly all the different parts enumerated by the Latin writers; viz. the cross piece or yoke (jugum) connecting the two uprights at the top; the cloth beam (insubulum) immediately under it, round which the cloth was rolled as the work progressed; the pair of treddles or leash rods (liciatoria), which are used to decussate the threads of the warp, so as to open a shed for the passage of the shuttle (alveolus), or the needle (radius), which convey the weft across it; below these is the reed (arundo), which is passed alternately over and under every thread of the warp, in order to separate the whole of them into two parcels for receiving the leashes (licia); and finally the yarn beam (scapus), to which the threads or yarns forming the length of the cloth are fastened. In this loom the web is driven from below upwards; in the following specimen it is driven downwards from above; but in both of them the weaver stood at his work instead of sitting.

2. Tela jugalis. The commonest and simplest kind of loom in ordinary use amongst the Romans (Cato, R. R. 10. and 14.), so termed because it had no cloth beam (insubulum), the yarns being merely attached to a yoke (jugum) on its top (Ov. Met. vi. 55.), as in the annexed example (Tela/2.1), representing Circe's loom in the Vatican Virgil. Schneider (Index. R. R. Script. s. TELA) considers that the tela jugalis is opposed to the upright loom, and that it designates a machine of similar construction to those now in use, in which the warp is spread in an horizontal direction, so that the weaver sat at his work instead of standing. But it does not appear that looms of that description were known to the Romans of Varro's day, for they are only alluded to by Artemidorus (iii. 36.) and Servius (ad Virg. Aen. vi. 14.), and no representation of the kind has been discovered in any of the ancient monuments; and, furthermore, it is reasonable to conclude that looms of the most ordinary description would be used in farmhouses, where they were only applied for making the commonest articles for the use of slaves; and in both the passages referred to from Varro, the tela jugalis is enumerated amongst the instrumenta rustica.

3. The warp (Virg. Georg. i. 285.); i. e. the series of strongly twisted threads or yarns, extended on a loom, into which the finer ones of the weft (subtemen) are woven to make a piece of cloth. The word is commonly accompanied by such epithets as stans, recta, pendula (Ov. Met. iv. 275. Id. Fast. iii. 819. Id. Her. i. 10.); all of which imply that the warp was fixed in a vertical position, and consequently upon an upright loom, such as is exhibited by both of the preceding illustrations.

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  Tela/1.1
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  Tela/2.1