tesserarius
Sign in to saveA tesserarius (, from tessera, a small tile or block of wood on which watchwords were written) 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 they were kept safe. There was one tesserarius to each centuria (Wilkes, 1972). They held a position similar to that of a first sergeant of a company in modern armies and acted as seconds to the optiones.
In the Vinony graph
Within Vinony's link graph, tesserarius is referenced by 14 other articles, and connects out to Roman limes, Latin and Hadrian's Wall.
It is catalogued under the topic Military ranks of ancient Rome.
Its subject is documented across 13 Wikipedia language editions.
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- position
- Named after
- tessera
- Country
- Ancient Rome
Show 1 more fact
- used by
- Roman army
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Encyclopedic overview
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A tesserarius (, from tessera, a small tile or block of wood on which watchwords were written) 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 they were kept safe. There was one tesserarius to each centuria (Wilkes, 1972). They held a position similar to that of a first sergeant of a company in modern armies and acted as seconds to the optiones.
Tesserary pay was one and a half times (sesquiplicarii) that of the standard legionary pay.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “tesserarius” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
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