Abacus (piece of furniture)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Abacus (Latin abacus ) is the name for an antique piece of furniture. In the Roman Empire this was a sideboard or a splendid table for the decorative display of valuable crockery and other valuable equipment.

According to Titus Livius , the abacus, like other luxury items, was introduced into Italy by the consular Gnaeus Manlius Vulso when he brought these splendid goods back to his homeland after his campaigns during his consulate in Asia Minor (189 BC) and during his triumphal procession in 187 v. Chr. Presented. According to Pliny the Elder , the splendid tables displayed by Vulso during his triumph were even made of ore. However, the Swiss building researcher Ernst Robert Fiechter took the view that the abacus was not a piece of furniture previously unknown in Italy, but that Vulso was probably in his I introduced a luxurious form of furnishing, just like state goods in general with growing wealth in the first half of the 2nd century BC. Became common in Rome. It is uncertain whether the mention of the abacus by Cato in a list of furnishings and agricultural implements indicates its practical use in the sense of a table for the preparation of the bread dough.

literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ Cicero , Speeches against Verres 2, 4, 35 and Tusculanae disputationes 5, 61; Pliny the Elder , Naturalis historia 37, 14; among others
  2. ^ Livy, Ab urbe condita 39, 6, 7.
  3. ↑ Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historia 34, 14.
  4. ^ Ernst Robert Fiechter: Abacus . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Supplementary volume III, Stuttgart 1918, Col. 1-3 (here: Col. 2).
  5. ↑ Cato, De agri cultura 10, 4 and 11, 3; Ernst Robert Fiechter rejects such a function of the abacus: Abacus . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Supplementary volume III, Stuttgart 1918, Col. 1-3 (here: Col. 2 f.).