Writing like the Romans – Horace Wax Tablet Class Set
The Horace Wax Tablet Class Set is a complete teaching set for grades 5 to 7: solid-wood wax tablets with black-pigmented beeswax, beechwood styli, teacher tools and didactic teaching material in other words, everything a class needs to move into a Roman writing room for a double lesson, a project day or an entire project week.
Saepe stilum vertas. Turn the stylus often – and Your class writes as they did 2,000 years ago.
The instruction that has not aged in two thousand years
Saepe stilum vertas. Turn the stylus often. The Roman poet Horace wrote this in his Sermones, and he meant more than a movement of the hand. Whoever turns the stylus points the flat end downward, draws it across the wax, and the line disappears. A new attempt. Better this time. The wax tablet forgives every mistake, instantly and completely.
That was no coincidence. Roman writing culture was built on this principle. Schoolchildren in the ludus, the elementary school, practised their letters on wax until they had mastered them. Officials in Londinium kept their records on stamped tablets. Soldiers on Hadrian’s Wall wrote guard-duty lists and private letters. The wife of the baker Terentius Neo recorded her business transactions on a diptych, the foldable double format.
The wax tablet was the universal writing medium of the Roman world, from schoolchild to emperor. Augustus is said to have dictated on wax even on his deathbed. What moved onto papyrus or parchment was finished, final, expensive. What stood on wax could be erased. That made the tablet the thinking tool of antiquity: fast, direct, reversible.
That is exactly what Your pupils experience when they place a wooden stylus on black beeswax for the first time. The stylus glides, the line appears, the wax gives way. And at the end of the lesson, all tablets return to the box cleaned, ready for the next writing adventure.
What is inside the box
The Horace Class Set is a complete system. You fetch the box, distribute the material, and the lesson can begin. What You hold in Your hands and give to Your pupils is based on archaeological models from Pompeii, Vindolanda and the Bloomberg excavations in London.
The pupils’ individual wax tablet is made of solid wood. In the recessed, milled-out hollow lies black-pigmented beeswax, food-safe and allergologically harmless. The 14 × 9 cm format sits securely in pupils’ hands, fits into every schoolbag and onto every desk. The black wax is not a design decision; it follows the original findings: the surviving wax remains from antiquity are dark to black in colour, and in several cases the pigment has been identified as soot or manganese oxide.
The wooden stylus made of beechwood, stylus fagus, is twelve centimetres long. One end is pointed for writing, the other flat for erasing. Historically plausible, Roman schoolchildren wrote with simple styli made of wood, bone or bronze.
As a teacher, You receive the finer tool: the forged metal stylus with a tapered writing tip and broad spatula end. Heavier in the hand than Your pupils’ wooden stylus, it represents the most widespread historical form of Roman writing tool. Also included is the double wax tablet as a diptych, the teacher’s tool for demonstrating different tablet forms.
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Contents 30+1: 30 individual wax tablets, 30 wooden styli, 1 double wax tablet, 1 metal stylus, 31 pupil quick guides, 1 teacher lesson plan
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Contents 15+1: 15 individual wax tablets, 15 wooden styli, 1 double wax tablet, 1 metal stylus, 16 pupil quick guides, 1 teacher lesson plan
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Individual tablet: solid wood, black-pigmented beeswax, 14 × 9 cm, permanently reusable
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Wooden stylus: beechwood, stylus fagus, 12 cm, flattened erasing end
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Teacher tools: double wax tablet as a diptych, forged metal stylus
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Beeswax: RAL 041 A.1.III, food-safe, allergologically harmless
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Target group: grades 5 to 7, lower secondary level
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Time required: 90 minutes as a double lesson, expandable into a project day or project-week module
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Consumables: none, all tablets are permanently reusable
A lesson that stays with them
Who uses the set and why
The Horace Class Set works in a regular classroom, without special equipment, without prior knowledge, without Latin. Preparation takes about 15 to 20 minutes for distributing the material the first time it is used, and ten minutes the second time. What You bring is the teacher lesson plan. The set brings the rest.
In history and Latin lessons for grades 5 to 7, the wax tablet is the most direct route into Roman everyday life. Your pupils are not holding a display model in their hands, but the writing tool itself, in the form in which it was used for two thousand years. The moment a twelve-year-old understands that the stylus wants to be pulled downward and not upward is not a textbook teaching moment. It is a material experience.
For interdisciplinary learning, the set offers five points of connection: history through ancient school life and the Neumagen relief, Latin through Capitalis and sample sentences, religion and ethics through education as a right and social inequality in antiquity, German through writing prompts in a historical context, art through script as a design form and calligraphy.
The set is designed for many years of use in the history or Latin department collection. Practice tablets from our museum work have been in daily use for over a decade without ever needing the wax to be refilled. Once purchased, the set remains in the school.
Which set is right for You?
Anyone teaching a class of up to 30 pupils and wishing to establish the class set as permanent teaching material in the department collection should choose the 30+1 set. It supplies a full class in one go, without follow-up purchases, without gaps. A purchase that several teachers and several year groups can use.
Anyone teaching courses, clubs or smaller learning groups of up to 15 pupils will find the right option in the 15+1 set. Same content, half the class size, more compact in use and storage.
Individual tablets and wooden styli are available in the shop as replacement items. A complete reorder of the set is not necessary under normal use.
What Quintilian knew about writing on wax
Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, the most important rhetorician and educator of the Roman imperial period, explains in his Institutio Oratoria why writing on wax is the best method for learners:
“Optime formandis infantium studiis cera cedere solet.”
“Wax is best suited when it comes to shaping children’s learning progress.”
Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, around 95 AD
Wax yields. Wax forgives. Wax can be smoothed again. The writing tool itself teaches the attitude that good learning needs: begin gently, observe, correct, continue. Two thousand years later, this insight is contained in the flat end of the wooden stylus that Your pupils hold in their hands.
The most common questions about the Horace Wax Tablet Class Set
Do my pupils need to know Latin?
No. The set works just as well in pure history or general studies lessons as it does in Latin lessons. Pupils write their own name in Capitalis, form German sample sentences or design a mini letter as a Roman child. Latin sample sentences are included in the teacher lesson plan as a bonus for Latin learners, but they are not a requirement.
How long does a class set last?
Realistically, many school years, often decades. Practice tablets from our museum work have been in daily use for over ten years without ever needing the wax to be refilled. The requirements are gentle writing pressure and correct smoothing at the end of the lesson.
Can pupils with a bee allergy take part?
Yes. A bee-sting allergy is directed against bee venom, not against wax. Pure beeswax contains neither proteins nor toxins and is allergologically harmless. The beeswax in the class set is certified according to RAL 041 A.1.III.
How high is the risk of injury with the stylus?
The pupils’ wooden stylus is deliberately safety-optimised: minimally rounded tip, flat erasing end. Standard school supervision rules are sufficient; no special risk assessment is required. The metal stylus is exclusively a teacher’s tool for demonstration.
How much preparation do I need?
The first use takes about 15 to 20 minutes for distributing the material, plus half an hour to leaf through the teacher lesson plan. The second use reduces preparation to ten minutes. The set is designed as tested lesson material, not as a craft project that first has to be developed.
Can colleagues take over the set?
Yes, absolutely. The class set is designed for many years of use in the history or Latin department collection. The teacher lesson plan may be copied for collegial sharing. A source reference to Forum Traiani | Der Römer Shop is welcome, but not mandatory.
The day a writing stylus made history
Gaius Julius Caesar was no match for the 23 daggers. But he delivered the first stab of the day himself. When Senator Casca attacked him first in the Theatre of Pompey, Caesar seized his arm and drove his stylus through his forearm. An iron or bronze writing stylus, sharp enough for wax, is sharp enough for a defensive gesture. Every pupil knows the rest of the story. Very few know the beginning.
Source: Suetonius, Divus Iulius 82
Bibliography
Title: Sermones (Satires)
Author: Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Publication: Tusculum edition, Artemis & Winkler, Munich/Zurich
Date: 1993 (original work around 35 BC)
Title: Institutio Oratoria
Author: Quintilian (Marcus Fabius Quintilianus)
Publication: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt
Date: 1988 (original work around 95 AD)
Title: De vita Caesarum
Author: Suetonius (Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus)
Publication: Tusculum edition, Artemis & Winkler, Munich/Zurich
Date: 2014 (original work around 121 AD)
Title: Roman London’s First Voices
Author: R. S. O. Tomlin
Publication: MOLA Monograph 72, London
Date: 2016
Further links
Updated on: 08/10/2026
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