Harpaginetuli
Harpaginetuli a sort of decoration for the walls and ceilings of rooms, thus mentioned by Vitruvius, in a passage where he is speaking of irregular and fantastic ornaments (7.5.3), pro columnis enim statuuntur calami, pro fastigiis harpaginetuli striati cum crispis foliis et volutis teneris.
The word, not occurring elsewhere, has been given up as inexplicable, or possibly corrupt: the only plausible explanation is that suggested by a painting at Pompeii (Pitture d'Ercolano, tom. i. p. 212), which presents an architectural elevation covered all over with ornaments resembling so many little hooks (harpaginetuli, dim. of harpagones.
(Rich.) This identification was first made by Bailey, in his Auctarium to Forcellini.
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.