machine used by infantry for protection in the field:
and hence the word is applied to any fence, or boarding to form the limit
or edge of anything, as a table or a bed. _Plutei_ were not attached so
closely to the walls as _pegmata_, for in the _Digest_ they are classed
with nets to keep out birds, mats, awnings, and the like, and are not to
be regarded as part and parcel of a house[82]. Juvenal uses the word for
a shelf in his second Satire, where he is denouncing pretenders to
knowledge:

Indocti primum, quamquam plena omnia gypso
Chrysippi invenias, nam perfectissimus horum est
Si quis Aristotelem similem vel Pittacon emit
Et iubet archetypos pluteum servare Cleanthas[83].

In the first place they are dunces, though you find
their houses full of plaster figures of Chrysippus: for
a man of this sort is not fully equipped until he buys a
likeness of Aristotle or Pittacus, and bids a shelf take
care of original portraits of Cleanthes.

This investigation has shewn that three of the words applied to the
preservation of books, namely, _nidus_, _forulus_, and _loculamentum_, may
be rendered by the English "pigeon-hole"; and that _pegma_ and _pluteus_
mean contrivances of wood which may be rendered by the English "shelving."
It is quite clear that _pegmata_ could be run up with great rapidity, from
a very graphic account in Cicero's letters of the rearrangement of his
library. He begins by writing to his friend Atticus as follows:

I wish you would send me any two fellows out of your
library, for Tyrannio to make use of as pasters, and
assistants in other matters. Remind them to bring some
vellum with them to make those titles (_indices_) which
you Greeks, I believe, call [Greek: silluboi]. You are
not to do this if it is inconvenient to you[84]....

In the next letter he says:

Your men have made my library gay with their
carpentry-work and their titles (_constructione et
sillybis_). I wish you would commend them[85].

When all is completed he writes:

Now that Tyrannio has arranged my books, a new spirit
has been infused into my house. In this matter the help
of your men Dionysius and Menophilus has been
invaluable. Nothing could look neater than those shelves
of yours (_illa tua pegmata_), since they smartened up
my books with their titles[86].

No other words than those I have been discussing are, so far as I know,