Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Umbo

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. 

UMBO (ἄμβων). In a general sense, applied to anything rising or projecting from another surface, more especially when such projection possesses a round or conical figure; whence the following distinctive meanings:

1. (ὀμφαλός). A knob or boss projecting from the centre of a shield (Virg. Aen. ii. 544.), which served to turn off missiles discharged from a distance, or as a sort of offensive weapon at close quarters (Liv. iv. 19.); but the term is also frequently used by a figure of speech for the entire shield itself. The example (Umbo/1.1) is from the Vatican Virgil.

2. A prominent bunch of folds in front of the chest, produced by drawing up a portion of the left side of the toga from the feet, and fixing it in place by turning it over the belt formed across the breast by the upper sinus, where it forms a thick round mass of folds, standing out from the rest of the drapery like the boss from a shield, as exhibited by the part marked 5. in the annexed illustration (Umbo/2.1) from a statue of the Villa Pamfili at Rome. Tertull. Pall. 5. Pers. v. 33.; but in the last passage the term is applied in a figurative sense to the toga itself.

3. The kerb stone, which forms a raised margin to the trottoir or foot-pavement, on each side of a road or street, as shown by the annexed illustration (Umbo/3.1) representing part of the road way near the entrance to Pompeii from Herculaneum.

• 
  Umbo/1.1
• 
  Umbo/2.1
• 
  Umbo/3.1