Signaculum - Other Forms

Other Forms

Labels

Signaculum also describes the stamps on some Roman Imperial goods, and are used to identify the manufacturer and/or other pertinent facts about the item.

Mark of slaves

Slaves were also known to wear dog tags on their person, typically in the form of an unremovable metal collar that would be inscribed with messages such as:

If you find this slave, he has run away. Please return him to his owner at the following address. You will be rewarded.

These, along with branding and tattooing, were common ways for Roman slaves to be separated from the rest of the Roman social system, and easily punishable should they make their escape.

Stamps

It is possible that signacula that were carried by domestic workers were used as stamps to record usage of tools, and debts from one to another.

Read more about this topic:  Signaculum

Famous quotes containing the word forms:

    Anyone who seeks for the true causes of miracles, and strives to understand natural phenomena as an intelligent being, and not to gaze at them like a fool, is set down and denounced as an impious heretic by those, whom the masses adore as the interpreters of nature and the gods. Such persons know that, with the removal of ignorance, the wonder which forms their only available means for proving and preserving their authority would vanish also.
    Baruch (Benedict)

    The analogy between the mind and a computer fails for many reasons. The brain is constructed by principles that assure diversity and degeneracy. Unlike a computer, it has no replicative memory. It is historical and value driven. It forms categories by internal criteria and by constraints acting at many scales, not by means of a syntactically constructed program. The world with which the brain interacts is not unequivocally made up of classical categories.
    Gerald M. Edelman (b. 1928)