Smith, William: A smaller dictionary of Greek and Roman antiquities (London, 1871)

STILUS.

35

A

SI OLA.

the history of Rome during the first centuries
after the conquest of Italy by the Germans,
we have every reason to -wonder that so
many specimens of ancient art have come
down to our times. The greatest destruction,
at one time, of ancient works of art is sup-
posed to have occurred at the taking of Con-
stantinople, in the beginning of the thirteenth
century. Among the few works saved from
this devastation are the celebrated bronze
horses which now decorate the exterior of
St. Mark's church at Venice. They have
been ascribed, but without sufficient au-
thority, to Lysippus.

STILUS or STYLUS is in all probability
the same word with the Greek o-niAos, and
conveys the general idea of an object taper-
ing like an architectural column. It signi-
fies, (1) An iron instrument, resembling a
pencil in size and shape, used for writing
upon waxed tablets. At one end it was
sharpened to a point for scratching the
characters upon the wax, while the other
end, being flat and circular, served to render
the surface of the tablets smooth again, and
so to obliterate what had been written.

Stilus. (Mumo Borbonioo, vol. vi. tav. 35.)

Thus, vertere stilum means to erase, and
hence to correct. The stylus was also termed
graphium, and the case in which it was kept
graphiarium.—(2) A sharp stake or spike
placed in pitfalls before an entrenchment,
to embarrass the progress of an attacking
enemy.

STIPENDliKII. The stipendiariae urbes
of the Roman provinces were so denominated,
as being subject to the payment of a fixed
money-tribute, stipendium, in contradistinc-
tion to the vectigales, who paid a certain
portion as a tenth or twentieth of the pro-
duce of their lands, their cattle, or customs.
The word stipendium was used to signify the
tribute paid, as it was originally imposed for
and afterwards appropriated to the purpose
of furnishing the Roman soldiers with pay.
Iks eon/iir.o:i of the urbes stipendiariae is

generally thought to have been more honour-
able than that of the vectigales, but the dis-
tinction between the two terms was not
always observed. The word stipendiarius is
also applied to a person who receives a fixed
salary or pay, as a stipendiarius miles.

STIPENIJIUM, a pension or pay, from
stipcm and peiido, because before silver was
coined at Rome the copper money in use was
paid by weight and not by tale. According
to Livy, the practice of giving pay to the
Roman soldiers was not introduced till b.c.
405, on the occasion of the taking of Tarra-
cina or Anxur. It is probable, however, that
the)- received pay before this time, but, since
it was not paid regularly, its first institution
was referred to this year. In b.c. 403 a
certain amount of pay was assigned to the
knights also, or Eqvites, p. 156, b. This,
however, had reference to the citizens who
possessed an equestrian fortune, but had no
horse [equus publicus) assigned to them by
the state, for it had always been customary
for the knights of the 18 centuries to receive
pay out of the common treasury, in the shape
of an allowance for the purchase of a horse,
and a yearly pension of 2000 asses for its
keep. [Aes Eqcestre ; Aes Hordearii'm.]
In the time of the republic the pay of a
legionary soldier amounted to two oboli, or

asses ; a centurion received double, and
an eques or horseman triple. Polybius states
that foot soldiers also received in corn every
month an allowance (demensum) of § of an
Attic medimnus, or about 2 bushels of wheat:
the horsemen 7 medimni of barley and 2 of
wheat. The infantry of the allies received
the same allowance as the Roman : the horse-
men 1^ medimni of wheat and 5 of barley.
But there was this difference, that the allied
forces received their allowances as a gra-
tuity ; the Roman soldiers, on the contrary,
had deducted from their pay the money value
of whatever they received in corn, armour,
or clothes. There was indeed a law passed
by C. Gracchus, which provided that besides
their pay the soldiers should receive from
the treasury an allowance for clothes ; but
this law seems either to have been repealed
or to have fallen into disuse. The pay was
doubled for the legionaries by Julius Caesar
before the civil war. He also gave them
corn whenever he had the means, without
any restrictions. Under Augustus it appears
to have been raised to 10 asses a day (three
times the original sum). It was still fur-
ther increased by Domitian. The praetorian
cohorts received twice as much as the
legionaries.

STOLA, a female dress worn over the
tunic ; it came as low as the ankles or feet.