240 ROMAN PAVEMENTS. 



In respect of the material, the red tesserae are of brick, and 

 the others, the white, the blue-grey, the yellow, and the black, 

 are all of local stones. 



To have written the foregoing is to have involved myself at 

 the outset, in a maze of controversial subjects from which I 

 now proceed to extricate myself. 



Tessera. The meaning of the word tessera was not originally 

 that of a die or cube. It seems easy to associate it with the 

 Greek reo-o-opcs, four, though the connection is denied by some 

 philologists. 



Many years ago there was found in Monmouthshire a stone 

 bearing this inscription PRIMVSTES/ERA an abbreviation, 

 doubtless, of the words Primus Tesserarius, the designation of a 

 military officer, a centurion, whose duty it was by the authority of 

 a square billet of wood, a sort of tally of which the fellow was 

 kept by the general in command, and which was called a tessera, 

 to communicate his orders in secret to the men of his company. 



Pliny records that Palamedes, who fought in the Trojan war, 

 was the first who co-ordinated an army by means of signals, 

 tesserae, and sentinels.* Livy (d. A.D. 17), speaking of the 

 secret reinforcement of Nero's army, says that a tessera was sent 

 through the camp, ordering that each officer should receive a 

 corresponding officer, each horseman a horseman, and each 

 footsoidier a footsoldier.f And Virgil writes " Now bugles 

 blow ; the tessera, the sign for war, goes forth." \ 



Similar billets of wood, with a square transverse section, but 

 perhaps longer than those of military service, and also called 

 tesserae, were used as tallies in the commercial world. Plautus 

 (d. B.C. 184) shows this when he says "Each of the two men 



* Ordinem exercitus, signi dationem, tesseras, vigilias Palamedes invenit 

 Trojano bello. Pliii. VII., 56. Dat tessera signum excubiis, positaeque vices. 

 Statius (died A.D. 86). Thebaidos 10.17. 



t Tessera per castra, at Livio consule, data erat, ut tribunus tribunum, centurio 

 centurionem, eques equitem. pedes peditem, acciperet. Liv. XXVII., 46. 



J Classica jamque sonant ; it bello tessera signum. JEn. VII., 637. 



