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

quadrant, and another stone mass, likewise whole and incorrupt, weighing ten pounds, and another of four pounds, mutually agreeing and responding, even with another bronze pound in the possession of the aforementioned Illustrious Fulvius, on the upper surface of which this mark was in silver letters: I, and on the circumference these other letters: EX. AVC. D. CAES. From the authority of the Divine Caesar, and also with another bronze half-pound of the same, that is, six inches, likewise mutually agreeing and concordant, I arranged for a sextarium liquid measure to be formed, such as I remembered having seen in the hands of Angelus Colotius while I was a young man. It was round in shape, with a flat base, taller than it was wide, equal from bottom to top, with an inscription of Emperor Honorius. And this sextarium, formed by me in this way, I modulated and I arranged that it would be capable of holding twenty inches of pure water from a cistern, which is rain water, formed from the aforementioned weights. Then from that common foot, which I said I believe to be legitimate, I had a quadrantal a cubic foot/measure formed from cypress planks, which are the least of all moved by moisture or dryness, and thus I examined the aforementioned sextarium with this quadrantal, using purified and sifted millet, by which measures are accustomed to be examined in Rome. With diligence and knowledge applied, I found that the aforementioned quadrantal is filled and emptied by forty-eight sextaria, a straight-edge always being applied, so that nothing remained or was lacking from either the sextarium or the quadrantal. And when I had with me another bronze sextans a sixth of a pound of greater weight than the others mentioned, in which on the upper surface one sees it marked thus: 8.B., that is, two inches, between the inch of which sextans and the grains of the other mentioned weights, twenty-one grains—taken from the ounce of our time—intervene, by which this is larger than those. (By these grains, however, I understand those of which twenty-four constitute a scrupulum.) Again, I had another sextarium made similar to the previous one, which would be capable of holding twenty inches of the same water from a cistern; and likewise I had another quadrantal formed from that larger bronze foot. With diligence and examination applied as I had done before, I found that this sextarium made from the larger inches agreed with this quadrantal formed from the larger foot no less than the sextarium made from the previous inches had agreed with the previously formed quadrantal. Whence I made a conjecture that this larger foot and inch were of a later and almost final time; because today also in Rome a larger inch than the aforementioned is found, so that it is permissible to believe that weights gradually increased to this magnitude of weight which exists now,