clipeus

From Latin clipeus.

clipeus (plural clipei)

1. (historical) A shield worn by soldiers of ancient Greece and Rome.
2. (architecture) An ornamental disk of marble in this shape.
3. (entomology) Part of the exoskeleton of an insect between the carapace and mandibles.

• Pulices, spicule

• clupeus, clypeus

The origin is uncertain, perhaps from Proto-Italic *klupeos.^[1] It may be from Etruscan.

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈklɪ.pe.ʊs]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈkliː.pe.us]

clipeus m (genitive clipeī); second declension

1. a type of large round shield, properly: a type of shield that was convex (bowl-shaped), likely at least 0.9 m in diameter, and was gripped at the edge, with a fastening for the forearm in the middle
   • 29 BCE – 19 BCE, Virgil, Aeneid 2.225–227:

     “At geminī lāpsū dēlūbra ad summa dracōnēs
     effugiunt saevaeque petunt Trītōnidis arcem
     sub pedibusque deae clipeīque sub orbe teguntur.”

     “But the two serpents escape by gliding [away] to the highest temples [of Troy], and seek the citadel of the fierce Tritonian [Minerva], [where] they shelter beneath the feet of the goddess and under the disc of [her] shield.”

2. disk of the sun
3. vault of the sky

Second-declension noun.

• “clipeus”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “clipeus”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• "clipeus", in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• clipeus in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• “clipeus”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper’s Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “clipeus”, in William Smith et al., editor (1890), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin