350
NOTES AND QUERIES.
s. v. MAY 5, iwe.
GREEK AND ROMAN TABLETS.
(10 th S. v. 228.)
A CLEAR account of the wax-coated tablets used by the ancient Greeks and Romans, with numerous references to classical writers, as well as to the modern literature of the subject, is given on pp. 19-26 of (Sir E. Maunde Thompson's 'Handbook of Greek and Latin Paleography ' (Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibrier & Co., No. Ixxiii. in their " Inter- national Scientific Series").
The stilus, the instrument for writing and erasing, is described at p. 48 of the same book, while on pp. 208-10 will be found facsimiles of the writing on such tablets, the first being from a Pompeian example; the originals of the other two were found in Dacia. It is interesting to know that similar writing materials continued to be employed for certain purposes in Western Europe during the Middle Ages, and that " it is said that quite recently sales in the fish- market of Rouen were noted on waxen tablets " (Thompson, p. 23).
Prof. Gardthausen, in his very brief notice of Wachstafeln (* Griechische Palaeographie, 3 p. 26), refers the reader, for an account of their use in mediaeval times, to Edelestand du Meril, 'De 1'Usage non interrompu jusq'a nos Jours des Tablettes de Cire,' in the Revue arche'ologique, 1860, pp. 1-16, 91-100.
Specimens of ancient tablets and stili are to be seen in the British Museum.
EDWARD BENSLY.
University College of Wales, Aberystwyth.
COL. WALKER will find much information about the writing materials in ordinary use by the Romans in the 'Manual of Roman Antiquities,' by Prof. Ramsay, revised and partly rewritten by Signor Lanciani, 1894.
The Romans for memoranda, and notes made for temporary purposes, used thin pieces of wood covered with wax (taluloe ceratce), on which they wrote with an iron pencil (stilus), ground to a sharp point at one end, to form the letters, and flattened at the other end, to smooth the waxen surface and obliterate the writing ; hence the phrase " vertere stilum " (turn round the stilus), i.e., make an erasure, used by Cicero.
Plautus, in the * Bacchides,' Act IV. sc. iv., writes "Effer cito stilum, ceram, et tabellas et linum " (bring out quickly the stilus, the wax, the thin boards, and the thread).
Cicero speaks of the " stilus exercitatus " (the practised pen) ; and Juvenal says in Satire I. 11. 63-4 :
Nonne libet medio ceras implere capaces
Quadrivio.
The common way "of writing wills was on small waxed tablets ("exiguis tabulis")j hence the first page was ** prima cera," the next "secunda cera," and so on. Horace refers to this in Satire II. v. 52-4 :
Tabulas a te removere memento,
Sic tamen, ut limis rapias, quid prima secundo
Cera velit versu.
Martial, in his epigram, iv. 70, sneeringly remarks :
Prseter aridam restem Moriens reliquit ultimis pater ceris.
JAMES WATSON. Folkestone.
The German author must, I think, have been in error if he described as " spoonlike" the implement used by the Greeks and Romans for smoothing over the surface of the wax in the tabellce so'as to obliterate the writing. The erasing end of the stilus was always flat, the only similar implement that can be described as "spoonlike" being the auriscalpium. The frequency of such erasures, and the use to which the flat end was put, are alluded to by Horace in his Satires (Lib. I. x. 72) : "Ssepe stilum vertas."
In Rich's * Diet, of Roman and Greek Antiq.' references to the use of the tabellce are given in Pliny's ' Hist. Nat./ xxxiv. 19 ; and Ovid, * Art. Araat.,' i. 437 ; iii. 469. The tablets which were used for memoranda were probably employed also as visiting cards. Rich describes six varieties of the tabella, but not one that could be supposed to be in the nature of a visiting card. He, however, supplies an illustration from a sepulchral bas-relief, with the inscription TABELLARIUS underneath, and shows that this tabellarius was a letter-carrier, or special messenger, by whom either the correspondence of a private individual or the government dispatches were conveyed.
Although the stilus is constantly found in the London soil, there is only one example of the wooden tablet preserved in the City Museum, and it is doubtful whether this, in spite of its having been found on the site of the Royal Exchange, can be proved, any more conclusively than many of the so-called Anglo-Roman stili, to date from Roman times, unless it can be satisfactorily shown that it actually came from the virgin "Roman level," the likelihood of which seems to be precluded by the perishable nature of the article. Would not the Guild- hall example, since it is so well preserved, be rather mediae val than Roman, like many of the stili? J. HOLDEN MACMICHAEL.
