Homer, in the sixth book of the Iliad, speaks of such tablets, and there are frequent references to them in Latin writers; in Juvenal, Martial, and other authors. Many passages are to be found quoted in books upon the ancient Roman diptychs. It happens also that two ancient specimens have been found. Both were discovered in gold mines in Transylvania, and have been described by Massmann in a volume published at Leipsic in 1841. Each consists of three leaves, one of fir-wood, the other of beech, and about the size of a modern octavo book. The outer part exhibits the plain surface of the wood, the inner part is covered with wax surrounded by a margin. The edges of one side are pierced that they might be fastened together by means of a thread or wire passed through them. The wax is not thick on either set of tablets; it is thinner on the beechen set, in which the stylus of the writer has in places cut through the wax into the wood. There is manuscript still remaining on both of them: the beginning of the beechen tablets containing some Greek letters. The writing on the other is in Latin, a copy of a document relating to a collegium. The name of one of the consuls is given, determining the date to be A.D. 169. An abridged account of these very curious tablets is given in Smith’s “Dictionary of antiquities” under the word “tabulæ.” The consular diptychs were of much larger size than those made for everyday use: generally about twelve inches in length by five or six in breadth. Diptychs of this kind were part of the presents sent by new consuls on their appointment to very eminent persons; to the senators, to governors of provinces, and to friends. Each consul probably sent many such gifts, and duplicates of more than one example have been preserved. These naturally varied greatly, not only in the workmanship but in the material. For persons in high station or authority the diptychs would be carved by the best artists of the time, and if not made entirely of some metal very costly and valuable the material would be ivory, perhaps also mounted in gold. As we find in the fifth book of the letters of Symmachus (consul, A.D. 391), “Domino principi nostro auro circumdatum diptychon misi, cæteros quoque amicos eburneis pugillaribus et canistellis argenteis honoravi.” For others of lower rank or for dependents, they would be roughly finished and of bone or wood. It is to the custom of sending these diptychs to people of rank in the provinces that we owe the preservation of some still extant, and which have been kept in the country into which they came by gift or otherwise in very early times. Generally, in somewhat later days, they were given or bequeathed to churches; and, having been first used in the public services, were afterwards laid by in their treasuries.