Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Venabulum

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. 

VENA'BULUM. A hunting-spear (Cic. Fam. vii. 1.); a powerful weapon, with a long and broad iron head (Mart. xiv. 31. Virg. Aen. iv. 131.), generally of a lozenge shape, and sometimes furnished with a cross-tree (mora) to prevent the point from penetrating too far (Grat. Cyneg. 108 — 110.) The object itself is shown by the annexed wood-cut (Venabulum/1.1), from a fresco painting in the sepulchre of the Nasonian family on the Flaminian way near Rome. It also exhibits a singular method adopted by the ancient huntsmen for entrapping wild beasts by means of a mirror set up over the front of a cage; but the ordinary manner of using the hunting-spear, which was rearely or never employed as a missile, is also shown by the subsequent illustration, and by the first wood-cut on the following page.

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