Dossuarius
Dossuarius or DORSUARIUS, any animal carrying burthens on its back (Varr. R. R. 2.6 and 10). It carried its load either by means of panniers [CLITELLAE] or the packsaddles (sagma), whence we read of equus sagmarius (Lamprid. Heliog. 4; Vopisc. Aur. 7). Hence came the German Saum-pferd and the English sumpter-horse. The annexed cut, representing a mule and a camel, carrying burthens, accompanied by two conductors, is taken from the Theodosian Column at Constantinople.
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.