Ludus, R. A game or pastime; ludus litterarius, or ludus simply, was a school for the instruction of youth; ludus duodecim scriptorum, a kind of backgammon played by the ancients; ludus fidicium, a music school; ludus gladiatorius, a school for gladiators directed by a lanista.
Lumachel (It. lumachella, a little snail). A marble full of fossil shells, and of beautiful iridescent colours, sometimes a deep red or orange; called also fire marble.
Luna, R. (lit. moon). An ivory or silver shoe-buckle worn by Roman senators. (Compare Lunula.)
Lunated. Crescent-shaped.
Lunette. (1) In Fortification, a work with two faces and two flanks, i. e. a Redan to which flanks or lateral wings have been added; in form, therefore, it resembles a Bastion. (2) In Architecture, a crescent or semicircular window, or space above a square window beneath a rounded roof. Hence the paintings on such a space are called lunettes; e. g. those of Raffaelle in the Vatican.
Lunula, R. (dimin. of luna). (1) An ornament in the form of a crescent worn by women round the neck. (2) The white moon-shaped marks at the roots of the finger-nails. (Cf. Menis.)
Lupatum, R. A jagged bit with teeth like a saw (lupus); whence its name.
Lupercalia, R. Festivals held at Rome on the fifteenth of the calends of March (15th of February), in the Lupercal, a sacred enclosure or cave on the Palatine, regarded as the den of the she-wolf who nursed Romulus and Remus. The luperci assembled together and sacrificed goats and young dogs, with the skins of which they ran through the streets half naked. [Lupercus, or Februus, was the god of fertility. The festival was originally a shepherd festival; the ceremony was symbolical of a purification of shepherds, and commemorated the time when Rome was a nation of shepherds.]
Lupus, R. (lit. wolf). (1) A hand-saw. (2) Lupus ferreus, a huge iron hook, lowered from the walls of a besieged place to catch the point of the battering-ram. (See Harpaga.)
Lura, R. Literally, the mouth of a large leathern sack for wine and oil, and thence the sack itself.