ROMAN PAVEMENTS. 245 



Muses, and that mosaic, opus musivum, a term not used by 

 Pliny, means whatever pertains to the Muses ; that is, whatever 

 is artistic or ornamental. 



The word tessera was also employed to designate the men of 

 a playing- board. Pliny himself mentions that brought to 

 Rome by Pompey, which was made of two precious stones, 

 three feet by two feet in area. As this table is called alveum 

 lusorium, it looks as if, like a solitaire board, it was provided 

 with holes to receive the tesserae, which may once have had 

 square heads, but which in later times were made cylindrical, like 

 those now shown. * The Greek word for dice, pipped on 

 all six sides, was uj3ot, whereas &<TTpayd\oi were marked on only 

 four sides. The Latins had the same word cubus, a cube, but 

 they preferred to extend the meaning of tesserae so as include 

 dice. 



Martial (d. A.D. 143), sixty-four years after Pliny, says in an 

 epigram on a gaming-table, " My tesserae are counted with twice 

 six pips." f 



At last, then, the small square facets of the units of 

 a Mosaic were called tesserae, while, oddly enough, tessellae 

 continued to denote the larger slabs. A tesserarius was a worker 

 with tesserae (tesserarum faciendarum artifex), and a tessellarius 

 was a maker of tessellae (qui tessellas facit), perhaps, much the 

 same thing. Then came the participle of a not-yet-existing 

 verb. Suetonius (who died after A.D. 117), says that Caesar 

 carried about with him "tessellata et sectilia pavimenta" 

 (Suet. 46). 



And ultimately the verb itself arrived, the single example of it 

 occurring in a Catalogue of the Verona Museum compiled by 

 MafTejus in 1749, recording an inscription on a Mosaic, " Eusebia 

 cum suis tessellavit." 



* Pompeius transtulit alveum cum tesseris lusorium e gemmis duabus latum 

 pedes tres, longum pedes quatuor, in eo fuit Luna Aurea pondo XXX. 

 Plin. XXXVII., 2. 



+ Hie mihi bis seno numeratur tessera ptmcto. Mart. Epig. XIV., 17. 



