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153 wax tablets in Pompeii
Tablets as status symbols
Several famous portraits of modestly wealthy Romans, including a woman and a couple, show a wax tablet in a wooden frame, paired with a pen for writing on the wax. Including one in your portrait was a sign of education and status in Roman society.
Lucius and his records
Lucius was active in Pompeii from 15 to 62 A.D., and the tablets recorded his life and activity there. They were found in his house, where the wax and wooden frames had been put to everyday use.
One receipt, now on display in the Archaeological Museum of Naples, includes his work in the fullonica business, the workshops that finished and cleaned woven cloth.
How did a Roman wax tablet work?
A tablet was a wooden frame with a shallow recess filled with a layer of wax. The writer scratched letters into the wax with the pointed end of a metal or bone stylus. The flat end of the stylus smoothed the wax so the tablet could be used again. Several tablets could be tied together along their edges to make a small book.
Why use wax tablets instead of papyrus?
Papyrus was made in Egypt and had to be shipped across the Mediterranean, which made it costly. A wax tablet could be wiped and reused many times, so it suited drafts, notes, and everyday accounts. Documents that needed to last were often written in ink on papyrus or sealed between tablets. Tablets sealed with the signatures of witnesses served as legal records of sales and loans.
How did wooden tablets survive the eruption?
Wood normally rots away within a few centuries. At Pompeii, the heat of the eruption charred the wood, and the ash that buried the town kept out the air and moisture that drive decay. Carbonized wood from the town includes beams, furniture, and tablets. The Caecilius Iucundus tablets were found in a chest in his house in 1875.
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