Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Tympanum

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. 

TYM'PANUM (τύμπανον, κύκλωμα βυρσότον). A tambourine; consisting of a wooden hoop, covered on one side with hide, like a sieve (Isidor. Orig. iii. 21. 10. Eur. Bacch. 124.), and set round with small bells or jingles, like the annexed example (Tympanum/1.1), from an engraved gem. It was sounded by beating with the hand (Ov. Fast. iv. 324. Lucret. ii. 618. Catull. 64. 261. wood-cut s. TYMPANISTRIA), or running the forefinger round the edge (Suet. Aug. 61., wood-cut s. TYMPANISTA), and sometimes also with a stick as is stated by Isidorus (l. c.), and may be inferred from the joke of Phaedrus (iii. 20.) respecting the poor ass who suffered as much cudgelling after death as during life, because his skin was used to cover a tympanum. This instrument is distinguished from the larger and more ponderous kettle-drum by the epithet leve (Catull. 63. 6.) or inane (Ov. Met. iii. 533.); and it is clear, from its frequent occurrence in works of art representing the ceremonials of Bacchus and Cybele, that it, and not the drum, is intended when the term is used with reference to the worship of those deities.

2. The same word is supposed to have likewise designated an instrument like our kettle-drum, with one flat surface of skin strained over a metal basing, because a pearl, with one surface flat and the other round, was designated by a diminutive form of the same word, tympanium; and Apollodorus (Bibl. i. 9. 7.) describes a contrivance employed by Salmoneus to produce a loud noise, like thunder, which closely resembles the kettle-drum, being formed by a copper kettle (lebes), with a skin strained over its rims. If such a notion be correct, it is probably this instrument which Justin intends to particularize (xli. 2.), as employed by the Parthians to give the signal of battle; for they also employed the long drum (symphonia) upon similar occasions. Plaut. Crass. 23.

3. A wheel made of solid wood without spokes (radii), such as was used for wagons (plaustra), as exhibited by the annexed example (Tympanum/3.1), from a Roman bas-relief. Virg. Georg. ii. 444.

4. Tympanum dentatum. A wheel of the same description, with teeth or cogs round its edges. Vitruv. x. 5.

5. A tread-wheel for raising heavy weights, worked by human labour. (Lucret. iv. 907.) The illustration (Tympanum/5.1) is from a marble preserved at Capua, with an inscription commemorating the building or repairing the theatre of the ancient city. It represents the method adopted by the Roman architects for raising a column. The head of the shaft is encased in ropes, which pass through a block suspended from the top of a triangle or shears (vara, Vitruv. x. 13. 2.), like those employed for masting, and raise the pillar by working round the wheel as its revolution is forced on by the weight of the men upon it. The capital is placed on the ground ready to be put on its place when the column has been erected. The execution is rough and imperfect in details, and the wheel is a radiated one (rota), instead of a solid tympanum, which may have been intentionally designed by the artists, in order to exhibit the men at work; but the relic is valuable, as it explains an operation in ancient mechanics which has been regarded as extremely difficult to understand; — how the enormous columns of one solid block of marble could be raised, when they were placed at close intervals, often not more than 2½ diameters apart, as in the portico of the Pantheon, for instance, where the contiguity to each other does not seem to afford space for the requisite machinery.

6. A solid tread-wheel for raising water from ponds or stagnant pools, where there is no current to move the wheel. Several of these contrivances are described by Vitruvius x. 4. The simplest resembled the plan of the common water-wheel, described and illustrated s. ROTA, 4., except that the wheel itself was solid, and the motive power given by the tread of men, instead of the action of a current. Another contrivance of a more complicated character consisted of a wheel furnished with a certain number of apertures (aperturae), instead of buckets or scoops (modioli, haustra), on the circumference of the drum, through which the water entered, as the wheel was worked round by the labourers upon it, and fell upon boards (tabulae), radiating in the interior of the wheel from its circumference to the centre of the axle. This was formed out of a hollow cylinder, and had likewise a number of cavities (columbaria) in its circumference, through which the water penetrated the cylinder, and was thence discharged from its extremity into the receiving trough (labrum ligneum) and the channel (canalis) which conducted it through the land. Lastly, when the water to be raised was situated at a great depth from the surface where the tympanum was placed, a double chain, furnished with buckets, like our chain pumps, was attached to the axle, so that one set were let down and the other drawn up by the revolutions of the machine, each bucket, as it turned over the centre, emptying itself into a receiver constructed for the purpose.

7. A flat and naked triangular face, marked A in the annexed example (Tympanum/7.1), included within the converging and horizontal cornices which terminate the gable end of a building (Vitruv. iii. 5. 12. and 13.); so termed from its resemblance to the skin strained over a tambourine or a drum-head.

8. The panel of a door (Vitruv. iv. 6. 4. and 5.); so termed from a similar resemblance to the last mentioned. See JANUA.

9. A large flat salver, or plate with raised margins, like a tambourine. Plin. H. N. xxxiii. 52.

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  Tympanum/1.1
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  Tympanum/3.1
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  Tympanum/5.1
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  Tympanum/7.1