Tessera (commerce)

Last updated February 27, 2019

A tessera was the ancient Roman equivalent of a theater ticket. Stamped into a clay shard was an entrance aisle and row number for spectators attending an event at an amphitheater or arena. Above the doors of the Colosseum in Rome are numbers corresponding to those stamped into a spectator's tessera. Tesserae frumentariae and nummariae were tokens given at certain times by the Roman magistrates to citizens, in exchange for which they received a fixed amount of wheat or money.^[1]

In historiography, ancient Rome is Roman civilization from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD, encompassing the Roman Kingdom, Roman Republic and Roman Empire until the fall of the western empire. The civilization began as an Italic settlement in the Italian peninsula, dating from the 8th century BC, that grew into the city of Rome and which subsequently gave its name to the empire over which it ruled and to the widespread civilisation the empire developed. The Roman empire expanded to become one of the largest empires in the ancient world, though still ruled from the city, with an estimated 50 to 90 million inhabitants and covering 5.0 million square kilometres at its height in AD 117.

A ticket is a voucher that indicates that an individual is entitled to admission to an event or establishment such as a theatre, amusement park or tourist attraction, or has a right to travel on a vehicle, such as with an airline ticket, bus ticket or train ticket. An individual typically pays for a ticket, but it may be free of charge. A ticket may serve simply as proof of entitlement or reservation. A ticket may be valid for any seat or for a specific one.

Clay is a finely-grained natural rock or soil material that combines one or more clay minerals with possible traces of quartz (SiO₂), metal oxides (Al₂O₃, MgO etc.) and organic matter. Geologic clay deposits are mostly composed of phyllosilicate minerals containing variable amounts of water trapped in the mineral structure. Clays are plastic due to particle size and geometry as well as water content, and become hard, brittle and non–plastic upon drying or firing. Depending on the soil's content in which it is found, clay can appear in various colours from white to dull grey or brown to deep orange-red.

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A tesserarius, was a watch commander in the Roman army. They organized and had command over the nightly guard assigned to keep watch over the fort when in garrison or on campaign and were responsible for getting the watchwords from the commander and seeing that it was kept safe. There was one tesserarius to each centuria. They held a position similar to that of a non-commissioned officer in modern armies and acted as seconds to the optiones.

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The mapping of Venus refers to the process and results of human description of the geological features of the planet Venus. It involves surface radar images of Venus, construction of geological maps, and the identification of stratigraphic units, volumes of rock with a similar age.

References

↑ Smith, Sir William (1859), A dictionary of Greek and Roman antiquities (2 ed.), Little, Brown, and Co., p. 550

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[Smith1859-1] Smith, Sir William (1859), A dictionary of Greek and Roman antiquities (2 ed.), Little, Brown, and Co., p. 550