Situla
Situla dim. SITELLA (ὑδρία), a bucket for drawing water from a draw-well (Dig. 18, 1,
40.6) or for carrying it (Plaut. Amph. 2.2, 30; Isid. Orig. 20.15). Those for carrying water were either of earthenware (as in Egypt) and carried two together by a yoke, or of bronze (see Marquardt, Privatleben, p. 656). In Plaut. Cas. 2.4, 17, it was a voting-urn; but in this sense we usually find the diminutive form sitella (Plaut. Cas. 2.6, 11; Liv. 25.3, 41.18), as also urna and orca (Verg. A. 6.431; V. Max. 6.3, 4; Lucan 5.394; Vopisc. Prob. 8). It seems that, as among the Greeks, the urn in which the lots were placed was filled with water; and when this was poured out, the lot which appeared first floating on it was decisive: hence in Plaut. l.c., Situlam huc tecum afferto cum aqua et sortes:
and the expressions in Vopiscus, qui primum emergeret
and Probi nomen effusum est
(cf. Cic. in Verr. 2.51, 127; in Vatin. 14, 34; Marquardt, Privatl. p. 548). For the difference between sitella, the urn from which the names of the tribes or centuries were drawn to determine the order of voting, and cista the voting-box, see CISTA
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.