Georg. Codinus de Originib. Constant. Τὴν γῆν λέγουσιν Ἑστίαν, καὶ πλάττουσιν αὐτὴν γυναῖκα, τύμπανον βαστάζουσαν, ἐπειδὴ τοὺς ἀνέμους ἡ γῆ ὑφ’ ἑαυτὴν συγκλείει. Suidas, following him, or both following some older authority, says the same thing under the word Ἑστία. “Under the name of Vesta the Earth is represented by a woman bearing a drum, in which she is supposed to hold the winds confined.” The reason is somewhat puerile. It would have sounded better to say that she carried a drum, because the ancients thought her figure bore some resemblance to one, σχῆμα αὐτῆς τυμπανοειδὲς εἶναι. (Plutarchus de placitis Philos. cap. 10, id. de facie in orbe Lunæ.) Perhaps, after all, Codinus was mistaken in the figure or the name or both. Possibly he did not know what better name to give to what he saw Vesta holding, than a drum. Or he might have heard it called tympanum, and the only thing the word suggested to him was the instrument known to us as a kettle-drum. But “tympana” were also a kind of wheel.
Hinc radios trivere rotis, hinc tympana plaustris
Agricolæ.—(Virgilius Georgic. lib. ii. 444.)
Very similar to such a wheel appears to me the object borne by Fabretti’s Vesta (ad Tabulam Iliadis, p. 334) which that scholar takes to be a hand-mill.
Note 28, p. [70].
Lib. i. Od. 35.
Te semper anteit sæva Necessitas:
Clavos trabales et cuneos manu
Gestans ahenea; nec severus
Uncus abest liquidumque plumbum.