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Tab′let.


1. (Architecture.) A coping on a wall or scarp.

2. A plate or slab for writing upon.

The pugillares of the ancients were made in the form of books, the leaves of skin, ivory, parchment, wood, fixed within covers and held by a wire or ribbon which passed through holes in all of them, so that they opened like a fan. The terms duplices, triplices, quintriplices, indicated the number of leaves.

Ivory tablets.

Demaratus took a pair of tablets, and, clearing the wax away from them, wrote what the king [Xerxes] was purposing to do, upon the wood whereof the tablets were made; having done this, he spread once more the wax over the writing, and so sent it” — Herodotus, VII. 239.

Ivory is now commonly used.

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Demaratus (1)
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