CESTUS, or CESTUS, in Antiquity, a gauntlet made of thongs of raw hide or leather, which was worn by the pugilists in the public games. The cæstus encompassed the hand, wrist, and part of the arm; and in later times it was loaded with lead or iron, in order to give greater effect to the blows.
CÆSTUS also denoted the girdle of Venus. See CESTUS. CÆSURA (Latin cædo, I cut) is the name given to the division of certain of the longer kinds of verse into two parts, by causing a word in a given position to end in the middle of a foot, as in the pentameter. The term cæsura is also applied to a division of words at the termination of each foot, and according to its position in the line is called trimeteral, penthemeral, hepthemeral, or ennehemeral, i.e. occurring at the 3d, 5th, 7th, or 9th half foot. It
seldom happens that all these cæsuras are met with in the same line. In the following verse the first three of them occur—
Una sa-las vîo-tis nul-lam sper-are sa-lutem.
Though the cæsura may happen to be a short syllable, it is frequently lengthened both by the Greek and Latin poets.