ROMAN PAVEMENTS. 241 



has his own tessera, the account is bound to be right Suum 

 uterque habet tesseram, ratio constat." 



In like manner a piece of wood called a tessera was given to 

 departing guests by their host who retained the corresponding 

 tally by which he might know, receive, and entertain them 

 should they, or their successors, ever return. This constituted 

 "the right of hospitality," and when it was transgressed the 

 tessera was said to be broken.* 



And Pliny observes that for making tallies, the wood of the 

 Privet is very useful Ligustra tesseris utilissima (XVI. 18). 



The "tessera consularis " was a small oblong piece of ivory 

 or bone, with four faces, each of which bore part of an 

 inscription. This tessera was given to a " Spectator numorum," 

 an examiner of money ; and the inscription set forth his name, 

 and the date on which his duty was to be discharged. 



Thus : Floronius | Romanus S P Kalendis Decembribus | 

 Lucio Caninio Quinto Fabricio consulibus | that is, Spectator 

 on the first of December, B.C., 2. 



Tickets for corn were made of wood, or sometimes of lead, 

 and were issued to poor citizens the unemployed, as we should 

 say. They were called tesserae, as by Juvenal (d. A.D., 120), 

 when he warns a rhetorician to abandon his unremunerative 

 profession, to become an unemployed person, that he may get 

 the pitiful dole of wheat that the miserable tessera procures. f 

 Persius (d. A.D., 24), too, refers to this custom, but he uses the 

 diminutive lesserula perhaps to increase the scorn of his 

 assertion that true liberty w r as something higher than the 



* Plautus (d. B.C. 184). 



Poenulus V., 2. 



Agor. Ego sum ipsus, quern tu quseris. 

 Pocn. Si ita est, tesseram si vis hospitalem eccam attuli. 

 Agor. Agedum hue ostende. Est par probe : nam habeo domi. 



Ib. II., 1. 

 Cist. Hie apud nos confregisti tesseram. 



f" Summula ne pereat, qua vilis tessera venit 

 Frumeuti. Sat. VII., 174. 



