PETAURUM
PETAURUM (
πέταυρον,
πέτευρον) was, firstly,
a
pole or
perch upon which fowls roosted
(Theoc. 13.13; Pollux, 10.156): hence the better known use,
a spring-board for acrobats (
petauristae); in its simplest form a board balanced like a
seesaw, from which the performers threw themselves ( “corpora jactata
petauro,”
Juv. 14.265; cf. Lucil.
fr. 100); but it might be greatly elaborated, so that they sprang off
through hoops, and performed as on a trapeze. The hoops were sometimes on
fire, to increase the sensational character of the feat (Petron. 53). On
Manilius 5.439-443 Professor Mayor says, “Perhaps a wheel hanging
loose in the air, seated on which two jugglers keep the wheel in motion,
alternately rising and falling: if either were thrown off, he must leap
through flames and burning hoops.” This does not give a very
plain sense, and it seems pretty clear that the petaurum was not itself a
wheel. In the lines referred to we seem rather to see two acrobats springing
from an oscillating board, as above described, through the “flammas
orbesque” ( = the “circulos flammantes” of
Petronius): when one has thus leapt off, the other remains for a moment with
no one to balance him, while the board is just swinging back, and then he
also leaps off. In
Mart. 11.21 one end of the
springboard rests on a revolving wheel ( “rota
impacta petauro” ), and the acrobat has apparently
to pass on to the wheel, which may be the “graciles viae
petauri” of
Mart. 2.86. Pollux (
l.c.) seems to compare the
πέταυρον to the contrivance in which Socrates appeared aloft
in the
Clouds of Aristophanes. This will favour the connexion
suggested with
μετεωρος. (See further
authorities in Mayor's note on Juvenal,
l.c.;
Grasberger,
Erziehung, 1.120.)
[
W.S] [
G.E.M]
