Carabus
κάραβος
Carabus (κάραβος, καράβιον [Hesych.], Mod. Gr. καράβι, whence caravel and its cognates in other languages), a coracle or boat made of wicker-work and covered with raw hides. The word is late, not before Isidore (Orig. 19.1, 26); but the thing is described by Caesar (B.C. 1.54) as employed by him in Spain, from having seen it in Britain. It was used by the Veneti on the Padus, as well as by the Britons (Lucan, Phars. 4.131 ff.; and a gloss of Papias, quoted by Saglio, s. v.). The illustration, given both by Rich and Saglio, is taken from Scheffer, de Mil. Nav. Veterum, who describes it as from an ancient MS. of Vitruvius (Polenus, Supplem. ad Graev. et Gronov. v. p. 831). The lines down the sides show the seams where the different skins are sewn together. A similar form is seen on a sepulchral marble in Boldetti (Cimiterj, p. 366, cited by Rich).
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.