244 ROMAN PAVEMENTS. 



Now it is a very curious thing that in the whole of Pliny's 

 account of these mosaics he makes no use of the words tessera, 

 tessella, and tesserula, though he employs the first of them, the 

 familiar word tessera, when he describes how roof pavements 

 should be constructed. He says there must be two layers of 

 boards crossing each other and nailed at the ends, on which 

 must be placed a bed of lime and pounded pot, and upon that 

 large squares, "ex tessera grandi," not less than two fingers 

 thick [1.45111.]. He does not say whether these slabs are to be 

 of stone or of brick.* 



The omission of the last word, tesserula, must have been as 

 intentional as that of the others, for he remarks farther on that 

 the Romans soon acquired a taste for mosaic pavements, " as was 

 evident from the verse of Lucilius [d. B.C. 103], who observed 

 that oratory should be 



With coloured emblems like a pavement wrought. 

 A.rte pavwnento atque enblemate vermiculato" 



These words are absent from the Fragments of Lucilius that 

 have come down to us, but Cicero had quoted them 170 years 

 before, and rather more fully, thus : 



Quam lepide lexeis composite ? ut tesserula omnes 

 Arte pavimento clique emblemate vermwulato. 

 All his words as prettily placed as though they were tesserulse 

 in a pavement of coloured emblems.f 



Here, in the omitted portion of the very passage that Pliny cites, 

 is the very word he seems to require, but, instead of tesserulae, 

 he deliberately uses the words parvulce crustce, very small 

 segments of marble. J Perhaps it may be well to remind our- 

 selves here that museum signifies a temple or shrine to the 



* Tune nucleo crasso sex digitos induci et ex tessera grandi non minus alta 

 duos digitos strui.Plin. XXXVI., 25. 



f Deoratore, L. III., 43. 



J Frequentata vero pavimenta ante Cimbricum [B.C. 101] magna gratia 

 animorum indicio est Lucilianus ille versus, &c. Ibid. 



