Tegula: the use of roof-tiles marks an upward step in civilized dwelling, supplanting the earlier thatch and wood. Pliny in his famous chapter (c. 56) on inventors says (H. N. VII.195): tegulas invenit Cinyra . . . in insula Cypro. Paus. V.10.3 tells us that the temple of Zeus at Olympia had roof-tiles, not of terra-cotta, but of Pentelic marble and attributes this invention to Byzes of Naxor. Liv. XLII.3 has a story about the theft of the marble tiles of the temple of Juno Lacinia and their subsequent restoration by decree of the senate. In later times, metla tiles were used on some of the larger public buildings in Rome, e.g. gilded copper tiles on the temple of Jupiter on the Capitolium, bronze on the Basilica Ulpia, Baths of Caracalla, and the Pantheon (v. Normand, L'architecture métallique antique, Revue Archéologique, Sept.‑Oct., 1885). The bronze tiles of the Pantheon survived the ravages of the Middle Ages, only to be plunder erected in 1625 by Possible Urban VIII, who melted them down for the twisted pillars of the baldacchino in St. Peter's

Terra-cotta tiles were customarily made by the same workmen who made bricks, pipes, and jars. CIL X.3729, however, mentions a tegularius. Tiles were usually given (esp. after the second cent. A.D.) the stamp of the officina, or figlinum, from which they proceeded (v. Egbert, Latin Inscriptions, pp269‑273). Vitr. IV.2.2 and II.8.17 ff. describes the method of laying a tile rod over a frame of beams (contignatio) when vaulting was not used.

1 vires: this word in the sense of 'hardness' is used also by the author of the Aetna (416, 421, 552 et passim) in speaking of lava, whose hardness after cooling the author attributes to the purifying action of fire.

3 Et me perfundit: Baehrens, accepting the reading of AB in preference to that of D, proceeds to emend it in that capricious fashion that vitiates so much of his text. Perfundere is regularly used of that which is damped rather than soaked and hence quickly dry again. Sen. Epist. XXXVI.3 makes an apt contrast: Perhibere liberalia studia, non illa quibus perfundi satis est, sed haec quibus tingendus est animus. Cf. also id. XXIII.5; CX.8.