Weights and Measures

Abstract

In modern cultures, a wide variety of objects and practices are measured in a variety of dimensions (time, length, weight, etc.) with the implicit expectation that objects of equal measurements are interchangeable in use across a similarly wide variety of contexts. This was not true in the Roman world. Ambitions for standardizing weights and measures were weak at the local level (individual cities or even marketplaces) and weaker still at grander scales (provinces, the empire). Direct observation of surviving measurement apparatus shows the expected lack of standardization. Absent the possibility of transparently translating between thing and number, Romans adopted a number of other petrological strategies. Proportion, rather than measurement anchored to an external standard, was very prominent, sometimes in explicit form, sometimes implicit. In many contexts, a higher degree of approximation was allowed for than we might expect. Most important, while the results of measurement were not seen as transparent, that gave all the more occasion for individual performances of measurement in hyper-local contexts where their effects would be predictable.