Dictionary of Greek and Roman antiquities. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

.ASSESSOR. ASTRAGALUS. 143
carrying burthelts. (Aristot. Rhet. i. 7.) It is civil and military functionaries, had their assessors.
called &v&dopov by Aristophanes (Ran. 8). It de- An instance is mentioned by Tacitus (Ann. i. 75)
serves mention here chiefly from its frequent oc- of the Emperor Tiberius assisting at the judicia
currence in works of Grecian art, of which some (judiciis adsidebat), and taking his seat at the
specimens are given in the annexed cut. corner of the tribunal; but this passage cannot
be interpreted to mean, as some persons interpret
it, that the emporor sat there in the character
of an assessor properly so called: the remark of
Tacitus shows that, though the emperor might have
taken his seat under the name of assessor and
affected to be such, he could be considered ill no
other light than as the head of the state. (Compare
Suetonl. Tib. Nero, 33, Tib. Claudius, 12).
Under the empire the practice of having assessors continued (Plin. Ep. i. 20, vi. 11, x. 19;
Gellius, i. 22). Suetonius (Galba, 14) mentions the
case of an assessor being named to the office of
praefectus praetorio. The Emperor Alexander
Severus gave the assessores a regular salary.
(Lamprid. Alex. Sev. 46.) Freedmen might be
assessores. In the later writers the assessores are
mentioned under the various names of consiliarii,
juris studiosi, comites, &c. The juris studiosi, men-U D) < 7 2.tioned by Gellius (xii. 13), as assistant to the
judices (quos adhlibere in consilizul judicaturi soi*fa__ @ 9 tlent), were the assessores. Sabinus, as it appears
from Ulpian (Dig. 47. tit. 10. s. 5), wrote a book
on the duties of assessors. The assessors sat on the
tribunal with the magistrate. Their advice, or aid,
was given during the proceedings as well as at
other times, but they never pronounced a judicial
ASSA'RIUS NUMMUS. [As.] sentence. As the old forms of procedure gradually
ASSERTOR, or ADSERTOR, contains the declined, the assessores, according to the conjecsame root as the verb adserere, which, when coupled ture of Savigny (Geschticlte des Rwisz. Reclits im
with the word manu, signifies to lay hold of a thing, Mlittelalter, vol. i. p. 79), took the place of thejudices.
to draw it towards one. Hence the phrase radsrere For other mattersrelating to the assessores, see Hollin libertat/en, or liberali adserere amanu, applies to weg, Ilan2dbecl des UCivilprozesses, p. 1 52. [G. L.]
him who lays his hand on a person reputed to be ASSI'DUII. [LocuPLETES ]
a slave, and asserts, or maintains his freedom. The ASTRA'GALUS (&o'rpa-yaos), literally sigperson who thus maintained the freedom of a re- nifies that particular bone in the ankles of certain
puted slave was called adsertor (Gaius, iv. 14), and quadrupeds, which the Greeks, as well as the Roby the laws of the Twelve Tables it was enacted mans, used for dice and other purposes, as described
in favour of liberty, that such adsertor should not under the corresponding Latin word TALUS..
be called on to give security in the sacramenti actio As a Latin word, astragalus is used by Vitruvius,
to more than the amount of L. asses. The person who of course borrowed it from the Greek writers
whose freedom was thus claimed, was said to be on architecture, for a certain moulding (the astragal)
adsertus. The expressions lib-eralis causa, and which seems to have derived its name from its reliberalis manus, which occur in classical authors, semblance to a string or chain of tali; and it is in
in connection with the verb adserere, will easily fact always used in positions where it seems inbe understood from what has been said. (Terent. tended to bind together the parts to which it is
Adelph. ii. 1. 40; Plaut. Poen. iv. 2. 83; see applied. It belongs properly, to the more highly
also Dig. 40. tit. 12. De liberali Causa.) Some- decorated forms of the Ionic order, in which it
times the word adserere alone was used as equiva- appears as a lower edging to the larger mouldings,
lent to adserere in librltatem. (Cic. Pro Flacco, especially the ectinsus (ovolo), particularly in the
c. 17.) capital, as shown in the following woodcut, which
The expression asserere in servitutem, to claim a represents an Ionic capital found in the ruins of the
person as a slave, occurs in Livy (iii. 44, xxxiv. temple of Dionysus at Teos. Still finer examples
18.) [G. L.] occur in the capitals of the temples of Erechtheus
ASSESSOR, or ADSESSOR, literally, one who and Athene Polias, at Athens, where it is seen, too,
sits by the side of another. The duties of an on the sides of the volutes. It is also often used
assessor, as described by Paulus (Dig. 1. tit. 21. in the entablature as an edging to the divisions of
s. 1.) related to " cognitiones, postulationes, libelli, the cornice, frieze, and architrave. The lower
edicta, decreta, epistolae;" from which it appears figure in the woodcut represents a portion of the
that they were employed in and about the adminis- as ragal which runs beneath the crowning moulding
tration of law. The consuls, praetors, governors of of the architrave of the temple of Erechtheus. It
provinces, and the judices, were often imperfectly is taken from a fragment in the British Museum,
acquainted with the law and the forms of proce- and is drawn of the same size as the original.
dure, and it was necessary that they should have The term is also applied to a plain convex
the aid of those who had made the law their study. moulding of the same sectional outline as the
(Cic. de Oratore, i. 37, 1z Vetremin, ii. 29). The former, but without the division into links, just
praefectus praetorio, and praefectus urbi, and other like a torus on a small scale: in this form it is used