Analemma
ἀνάλημμα
Analemma (ἀνάλημμα), in its original meaning, is any thing raised or supported; it is applied in the plural to walls built on strong foundations. (Hesych., Suid. s. v.) Vitruvius uses the word to describe an instrument which, by making the lengths of the shadows of a fixed gnomon, showed the different altitudes of the sun at the different periods of the year. (Vitr. 9.7, 8, s. 6, 7: Schneider.) It must not be confounded with the modern analemma, which is more complicated and precise than the instrument described by Vitruvius.
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.