Tabellarius
Tabellarius a letter-carrier. As the Romans had no public post, they were obliged to employ slaves, who were called Tabellarii, as special messengers to convey their letters when they had not an opportunity of sending them otherwise (Cic. Phil. 2.31, 37; ad Fam. 12.12, 14.22). Those who were out of Italy could get their letters conveyed not only by ships' captains, but also by the special tabellarii of the provincial governor (Cic. Att. 5.1. 9; de Prov. Cons. 7, 15), or by those of the publicani (Cic. Att. 5.1. 5 and 16): for these tabellarii of proconsuls, see also Auct. de Bell. Hisp. 2.
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.