A builder's tool; as some [say], made out of iron, a sort of a small shovel, that the plasterers/whitewashers use. But others [sc. say that it is] a housebuilding tool, with which they straighten the bricks with each other; the one that some call a scraper. Others [say] that it is some kind of clay; as in Hermippus: “for of course he is held together with no binding, but with his own behaviour as the u(pagwgei=s.”[1] And Aristophanes in Birds [writes]: “and by Zeus the belted ducks were carrying bricks; and above flew [the swallows] with the (?)plaster on their backs”. The ducks [are called] 'belted' because they have a white girdle.