LITTER (lectica), a kind of vehicle borne upon shafts; anciently esteemed the most easy and genteel way of carriage. Du Cange derives the word from the barbarous Latin lecteria "straw or bedding for beasts." Others will rather have it come from lectus "bed;" there being ordinarily a quilt and a pillow to a litter in the same manner as to a bed.
Pliny calls the litter the traveller's chamber; it was much in use among the Romans, among whom it was borne by slaves kept for that purpose; as it still continues to be in the east, where it is called a palanquin. The Roman lectica, made to be borne by four men, was called tetraphorum; that borne by six hexaphorum; and that borne by eight octaphorum.
The invention of litters, according to Cicero, was owing to the kings of Bithynia: in the time of Tiberius they were become very frequent at Rome, as appears from Seneca; and even slaves themselves were borne in them, though never by more than two persons, whereas men of quality had six or eight.