Lucae Paeti ... de mensuris, et ponderibus Romanis, et Graecis

concerning which Marlianus in his On the Antiquities of the City, and Philander, often, and also the younger writers have mentioned, which I, while I was a young man, had inspected in the church of the Twelve Holy Apostles at the house of the Illustrious Colonna, and at its base I had read often POD.TH Likely an abbreviation for a Greek measurement, another bronze foot, or one of orichalcum a golden-colored metal/brass, was brought to me, likewise like the first, foldable; which, while it is folded, is closed with a nail fixed at one end and inserted into a hole existing at the other end, so that it cannot be easily unfolded, and when it is unfolded it is supported by a similar small plate, as the other just mentioned, so that it cannot be folded, distinguished by palms, inches, digits, and sextula a sixth part. Whence it happened that I was much more uncertain than before. For I found it to be longer than those Colotian and Statilian ones by the ninth part of their inch, and longer than that first bronze one by the third part of an inch, or duella two-twelfths of an ounce, the length of which likewise, taken from the measure of the porphyry column, Philander—who testifies that he had measured that column—asserts constantly to have existed in the place mentioned above. Wherefore, searching further, I found two other bronze feet, foldable like the aforementioned, with their own ringed small plates and nails, and of almost the same thickness as that one of mine described in the first place, similarly distinguished by palms, inches, and digits, in the possession of the illustrious Fulvius Ursinus, a Canon of the Lateran, a man most learned in good letters and most skilled and abundant in antiquities, agreeing to the dot in length with that first one of mine; and another one entirely similar to the aforementioned, in the possession of the aforementioned noble Marius Delphinus, which, however, is longer than the three aforementioned by as much as a scripulum of an inch and a third of a scripulum. And those, specifically mine and the Illustrious Fulvius's, proven by a triple testimony and the assent of all learned men who are in Rome, I have held for the true and legitimate measure of the ancient foot, and for true and ancient measuring feet, and I have not hesitated to make it public. But no less did it please me to investigate if I could attain by reason or conjecture whence the difference of these bronze feet of mine arose. For I held it for certain that that larger one of mine was not a Greek foot, since a Greek foot, as I handed down above, is larger than a Roman foot by a half-inch, whereas that one of mine exceeded those others by barely a third part of an inch, or duella. Wherefore I had with me an ancient stone felibra half-pound weight, quite incorrupt, with this mark on the upper surface: S, and one bronze dodrans nine-twelfths of a pound/foot, and likewise a bronze