tholus

Definitions

noun A round excavated tomb lined with masonry. See beehive tomb.
noun In classical arch., any circular building, as that designed by Polycletus at Epidaurus; also, a dome or cupola; a domed structure; specifically, at Athens, the round chamber, or rotunda, a public building connected with the prytaneum, in which the prytanes dined.

From Latin tholus ("dome, rotunda").

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There were no towers or battlements: only the faceted tholus, climbing until it lost itself against the sky and its momentary brilliancies were confounded with the faint star's.

The Shadow of the Torturer Wolfe, Gene 1980
The cover of the round ones is in the shape of a _tholus_, a building shaped something like a beehive, the tiles being represented by acanthus leaves, and the pinnacle by a bunch of flowers.

Pagan and Christian Rome Rodolfo Amedeo Lanciani 1888
Its dome of polished marble and tholus full of fire;

Tales of the Chesapeake George Alfred Townsend 1877
The fire-alarm bells then stuck 1-7-7-6 a few moments later, and as the Observatory clock sounded the hour of twelve, the fire-alarm bells struck 1-8-7-6; at the same moment the brilliant light in the tholus which surmounts the dome of the

Perley's Reminiscences, v. 1-2 of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis Benjamin Perley Poore 1853
The light in the tholus over the great dome of the

Perley's Reminiscences, v. 1-2 of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis Benjamin Perley Poore 1853