Tribulus
τρίβολος
Tribulus (τρίβολος), a caltrop, also called murex (V. Max. 3.7.2; Curt. 4.13.36). When a place was beset with troops, the one party endeavoured to impede the cavalry of the other party either by throwing before them caltrops, which necessarily lay with one of their four sharp points turned upwards, or by burying the caltrops with one point at the surface of the ground (Veget. de Re Mil. 3.24; Jul. Afric. 69; Polyaen. 139, 2). The taleae (Caes. Gal. 7.73) and the hami, stimuli or still (Bell. Afr. 31), were for the same purpose. They were pieces of wood with curved iron points, buried in the ground. The annexed woodcut is taken from a bronze caltrop figured by Caylus (Recueil, iv. pl. 98).
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.