File:Drawing of Roman fresco depicting a tragic actor with tragic mask found in Pompeii by Henri Roux the Elder.jpg

English: Drawing of Roman fresco depicting a tragic actor with tragic mask found in Pompeii by Henri Roux the Elder; Translated full plate description: "Plate 134: In an apartment, the walls of which are painted a bluish color with a red cornice, and which is adorned with a column of white marble; on a seat and steps of the same marble, sits an already old man, with brown skin, short hair, and a rare white beard. He contemplates a tragic mask that an almost naked young man, with a simple white drapery, has just placed on a kind of easel: this young man seems to be conversing with a third personage, who filled the part of the picture destroyed by time. As for the main figure, we can only see a poet, or better still a tragic actor meditating, before or after the performance, on a role played with this mask. It makes one think of those actors of whom Lucien speaks (1), who had just been great kings, rich satraps, Priams, Agamemnon, with the golden diadem and the purple robe, and who found themselves in their cold cell, poor and destitute as before. He still recalls that actor named M. Ofilius Hilarus (2), who, after having won a victory in the scenic games, placed before him the mask which he had used, took off his crown, placed it on the head of the mask, started to laugh. . . and fell dead.

The vignette represents two theatrical tesserae, that is to say two tokens serving as entrance cards, on which are marked the places assigned to the bearers. Let us remember that these ivory seals could only be engraved by hand, that one was needed for each spectator, and that this was still one of the least profusions that accompanied the theatrical representations of the old. We shall thus arrive at an approximate conception of this gigantic luxury, of which nothing, in modern times, could give a direct idea. The first tessera offers on one side the image in relief of an amphitheater with its vomitories roughly indicated, and in the middle, the pegma, a kind of tower which was raised with the aid of machines, and on which combatants were placed. : such was, no doubt, the spectacle of the day. The reverse bears this inscription: XI HMIKYKɅIA IA. Which means, no doubt, that the place assigned to the bearer of the seal was on the eleventh hemicycle or step: IA is the number eleven in Greek letters.
We do not conceive how the authors of the Methodical Encyclopedia were able to read HMEP day, on this first stamp, and AIΣKYɅOT (by a K) on the second. Are there any misprints? they abound, in fact, in this great dictionary.

The second tesserae is more difficult to explain: the objects it represents are confused; however, we can distinguish a small door, which is reached by a narrow staircase, and some cross-bars: these objects seem to us to indicate the wooden gallery, or the portico which rose on the top of the walls of the amphitheater or of the theatre, and which can be compared to the paradise of our performance halls (1). In the reverse inscription, XII AICX. ϒɅOϒ 1° B, the main word was read Aίσχúλου, from Aeschylus: it was interpreted by supposing, which is very probable, moreover, that one still represented in the towns of Campania the coins of the oldest of the great Greek tragedians. However, this interpretation of the second tesserae does not fit neither with the explanation of the first, nor with the sculpted objects on its obverse. There are seen hemicycles, and the reverse indicates in Greek and Latin numerals the particularly assigned hemicycle; here, we would see the wooden galleries, and the reverse would speak of Aeschylus! However, when so many learned archaeologists have seemed to be satisfied with the old explanation, it is with extreme distrust of our very selves that we will indicate a new one: we will take it for a simple hypothesis, good only to open the way to new research. And first, we notice that the middle line of the tesserae contains two words separated by a dot, AICX. ϒɅOϒ which does not make the name of Aeschylus. In the second part, υλου, can we not see an incorrect form for ὒλης or ξúλου, of wood? and here it is good to observe that ξúλον was particularly said of a wooden bench in theatres. The first part AICX. would be an abbreviation of αίσχροῦ or αίσχίστου, and would designate the last and worst place, the furthest from the places of honor, and the one which was always occupied by courtesans, the common people and the slaves. It will doubtless be objected to us that it is improbable that the publishers of the games attached an insulting qualification to a place for which they were distributing stamps: the objection is serious; but does not the dishonorable meaning often disappear in long-consecrated expressions? and are there not many consecrated expressions among the ancients which are unknown to us, because the lexicographers have neglected to transmit them to us, and because they are not found in the authors who have come down to us? Isn't this especially true with regard to theatres, of which we have no complete description? Finally, is not what we know on this point of antiquity composed of things guessed at rather than transmitted? We suspect that the expression αἴσχιστονξύλον, the last bench, does well to be placed in this category."