Colores Floridi. Ancient expensive and brilliant pigments. They were chrysocollum, indicum (or indigo), cæruleum (smalt), and cinnabar.
Colossus (κολοσσός). The word was used for all statues larger than life; that at Rhodes was ninety feet high. The Minerva and Jupiter Olympus of Pheidias, the Farnese Hercules, and the Flora of the Belvidere, were all colossal.
Colours, in Heraldry, are five: Blue or Azure, Red or Gules, Black or Sable, Green or Vert, Purple or Purpure. In French heraldry Green is Sinope. The uses and general symbolism of each colour are described under its own heading. The best work on symbolic colours is the “Essay” of M. Portal. One of the best on the theory of colours is that of Chevreuil.
Colubrina, Med. Lat. (from coluber, a snake). A culverin.
Columbar, R. A kind of pillory used for punishing slaves. The instrument derived its name from the holes in it, which bore some resemblance to pigeon-holes.
Fig. 182. Columbarium.
Columbarium. A dove-cote or pigeon-house, often constructed to hold as many as 4000 or 5000 birds. In the plural the term has many meanings. (1) It denotes the pigeon-holes or cells for the nests in a pigeon-house. (2) In a sepulchral chamber, the niches for holding the cinerary urns (ollæ). Fig. [182] represents the numerous columbaria in the tomb of the freedmen of Octavia. In the sepulchral architecture of the Jews, the rock-hewn walls forming the vestibules of certain tombs were honey-combed with minute columbaria, in which only lamps were placed. Fig. [183] represents cells of this character taken from the tomb of Quoublet-el-Endeh. (3) The openings in the side of a ship through which the oars passed. (4) The holes made in a wall to receive the head of a tie-beam. (5) The openings of the scoops in a particular kind of hydraulic wheel called Tympanum (q.v.).
Fig. 183. Columbaria in rock-hewn walls.