porticus

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English[edit]

In this plan of St Mary's Church, Reculver, in north-east Kent, the porticus (sense 1) of the 7th-century church are represented by the extensions to north and south from the main structure, which is in yellow. Other colours represent later additions.
Main gate of the Porticus Octaviae, a porticus (sense 2) founded in Augustan Rome

Etymology[edit]

From Latin porticus. Doublet of porch, portego, and portico.

Noun[edit]

porticus (plural porticuses or porticus)

  1. A small room in a church, commonly forming extensions to the north and south sides of it, giving the building a cruciform plan, which may function as a chapel, rudimentary transept or burial place.
    • 1980, Papers of the British School at Rome, R. Clay and Sons, page 110:
      It remains therefore to speculate on the form of the church: whether we located north and south aisles beyond the nave or whether these are porticuses is not clear. The church could have been fully aisled, or it might have had shorter aisles extending to the east end, or just flanking porticuses.
    • 1982, Lesley Adkins; Roy A[rthur] Adkins, A Thesaurus of British Archaeology, Newton Abbot, London: David & Charles; Totowa, N.J.: Barnes & Noble Books, →ISBN, page 145, column 1:
      Most early masonry churches were of a simple plan consisting of a nave, and sometimes a chancel, porticuses (in a cellular plan church) or transepts (in an integrated plan church), and a tower. Porticuses (porticūs: sing porticus) were lateral chambers.
    • 2000, Carole P. Biggam, “Grund to Hrof: Aspects of the Old English Semantics of Building and Architecture”, in Julie Coleman, Christian J[anet] Kay, editors, Lexicology, Semantics, and Lexicography: Selected Papers from the Fourth G. L. Brook Symposium, Manchester, August 1998, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, →ISBN, page 116:
      Early churches could have any number of porticuses, but it was common for small churches to have two, one on the north side, and one on the south side of the nave, amounting to rudimentary transepts. […] Morris’s translation refers to “three porches” and he omits ‘built on the outside’ (Morris 1967: 124). Since ModE porch indicates a covered approach to the entrance of a building, and since porticuses were usually only accessible from inside the church, this translation is misleading.
    • 2018, Frances Marrow, Anno Domini: The Story of Christianity in the British Isles, Kibworth Beauchamp, Leics: Matador, →ISBN, page 75:
      Only the nave survives but it is not difficult to imagine the apse at the east end, and the small porticuses to the north and south.
  2. An ancient Roman colonnade, arcade, or portico.
    • 1872, William Smith, editor, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, volumes III (Oarses–Zygia), London: John Murray, […], pages 4, 6, and 675:
      It lay between the Circus Flaminius and the theatre of Marcellus, occupying the same site as the porticus which was built by Q. Caecilius Metellus, after his triumph over Macedonia, in b. c. 146 [Metellus, No. 5], and enclosing, as the porticus of Metellus had done, the two temples of Jupiter Stator and of Juno. […] He built a magnificent house on the Palatine, which, according to Cicero (de Off. i. 39), contributed to his election to the consulship, and he also erected a beautiful porticus, which is spoken of below. […] The porticus erected by Cn. Octavius was called Porticus Octavia, and must be carefully distinguished from the Porticus Octaviae, built by Augustus in the name of his sister. […] In the Notitia we have mention of a Minucia Vetus et Frumentaria, whence it is doubtful whether two different porticus or only one is intended.
    • 1878, J. H. Parker, “Notes on the Discovery of a Roman Porticus at Lincoln”, in The Archaeological Journal. […], volume XXXV, London: […] [T]he Office of the [Royal Archaeological] Institute, […], page 398:
      Mr. Codd agrees that this Roman porticus must have been an arcade, with the columns of which we have the bases attached to the square piers; this was a usual Roman construction, and the two bases at an angle (one of them partly inserted in the other) would belong to this plan, the wide distance apart of the bases also confirms the idea that they stood against arches.
    • 1886, Thomas Morgan, Romano-British Mosaic Pavements: A History of Their Discovery and a Record and Interpretation of Their Designs, London: Whiting & Co., […], pages 105, 112, and 114:
      At the eastern end of the porticus is a square room of 14 feet, brick flues, painted stucco. […] Standing in the western porticus, and looking eastward, you have the river before you (within the distance of 180 yards), which, after winding below a rocky bank to the left and passing by the front of the villa, turns suddenly to the east, close under a hanging wood, on the steep side of the hill before mentioned. […] The entrance of this villa seems to have been on the east front, into a narrow porticus, or rather crypto-porticus, about fifty-four feet in length and eight wide, with painted walls and a tesselated pavement; […]
    • 1888, A Handbook of Rome and its Environs, 14th edition, London: John Murray, […], pages 80–81 and 178:
      This [the Forum of Trajan] was a large square with porticuses on three sides, and the Basilica, called Ulpia, from Trajan’s family name, on the N. side. […] Colonnades.—It is scarcely possible to image anything so perfectly adapted to the front of the basilica, or so well contrived to conceal the buildings on each side of the piazza, as these noble porticuses.
    • 1924, American Journal of Archaeology: The Journal of the Archaeological Institute of America, pages 378, 383, and 394:
      The existence of a similar hole, showing traces also of the removal of a foundation of the same general size, was noted, some years ago, under the north porticus on a general line with those just described and 14.50 to 15 meters from that furthest to the north, by which the Augustan sewer mentioned above (p. 375) had been destroyed. […] The portion of this wall, however, at the eastern end of the porticus on the north and below the ramp leading from the Nova Via to the Palatine, seems, in all probability, to belong in part to this period. […] The distance of the arcade, or porticus, from the water-basin, which, in its present form, differs somewhat from it in orientation (Plate X), was from 3 to 4 meters.
    • 1996, Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Period, volume 27, Brill, page 286:
      Ramage, op. cit., refers to there being a requirement in Rome that porticuses (colonnades) were to be built in front of buildings, as a measure either to help fire-fighting or to prevent people being injured by falling debris.
    • 1997, John Thomas Smith, Roman Villas: A Study in Social Structure, London, New York, N.Y.: Routledge, published 2002, →ISBN, pages 141–142:
      The idea of a place for relaxation may be relevant to two Swiss villas which show the breaking-forward porticus in minimal form. […] Although each half of the porticus has unusual proportions for what is likely to have been more of a room than a corridor, when compared to the elongated rooms found at Hohenfels, Sontheim a.d. Brenz and Wahlen it is within the normal provincial-Roman range. […] The plain piece of pavement between the mosaics is, in effect, like the internal porch found in some porticuses, of which Romegoux is an example (Fig. 13); a porch of that kind would be pointless unless the porticus were enclosed.
    • 2009, David S. Neal, Roman Mosaics of Britain: South-East Britain, Illuminata Publishers for the Society of Antiquaries of London, →ISBN, page 375:
      […] the building was extended north and south and given a fronting porticus on the east side as well as a rear porticus, although Detsicas (1983, 132) believes that these represent a single building phase rather than two. Later in the second century a cellar was constructed at the southern end of the rear porticus and a bow-fronted wing (similar to the earlier building at Folkestone), extending eastwards, was added to the south of the building, and probably a symmetrical one on the unexcavated north. The bipartite room of this wing had a channelled hypocaust, in the fill of which were fragments of Mosaic 356.
    • 2014, Noelle K. Zeiner-Carmichael, transl., Roman Letters: An Anthology, Wiley-Blackwell, →ISBN:
      The upper end of the crypto-porticus forms its own room looking out to the hippodrome, the vineyards, and the mountains; next to it is a room that enjoys the sun, especially during winter.
    • 2021, Frank Sear, Roman Architecture, 2nd edition, Routledge, →ISBN:
      There is a space of only 2.4 metres between the porticus and the Theatre of Marcellus, showing that the theatre took up the maximum space possible. […] In 29 bc Marcius Philippus restored the Temple of Hercules and the Muses in the Circus Flaminius and built a porticus around it (Tacitus, Ann. 3.72).

Related terms[edit]

Further reading[edit]

Danish[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From Latin porticus.

Noun[edit]

porticus c

  1. (architecture) portico

Declension[edit]

Declension of porticus
common
gender 		Singular Plural
indefinite definite indefinite definite
nominative porticus porticusen porticuser porticuserne
genitive porticus' porticusens porticusers porticusernes

Latin[edit]

porticus (portico)

Etymology[edit]

From porta (“gate, entrance”) +‎ -icus.

Pronunciation[edit]

Noun[edit]

porticus f (genitive porticūs); fourth declension

  1. colonnade, arcade
  2. portico, porch

Declension[edit]

Fourth-declension noun.

Case Singular Plural
Nominative porticus porticūs
Genitive porticūs porticuum
Dative porticuī porticibus
Accusative porticum porticūs
Ablative porticū porticibus
Vocative porticus porticūs

Derived terms[edit]

Descendants[edit]

References[edit]

  • “porticus”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  • “porticus”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
  • porticus in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
  • porticus in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
  • Carl Meißner, Henry William Auden (1894) Latin Phrase-Book‎[1], London: Macmillan and Co.
    • to undertake a contract for building a portico: redimere, conducere porticum aedificandam (Div. 2. 21. 47)
  • “porticus”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
  • “porticus”, in Samuel Ball Platner (1929) Thomas Ashby, editor, A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome, London: Oxford University Press
  • “porticus”, in William Smith et al., editor (1890), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin
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