Weights and Measures Office and the Augusteum

Mensa Ponderaria

This office, discovered in 1883, is called Mensa ponderaria. It preserves the samples of the weights and measures used for the roman commerce of the Forum.
It's a rectangular entrance hall with two niches on the south side. The builders, who had control over weights and measures, gave the necessary instructions for the various weights and measures to be progressively engraved there.

It was not, however, these artisans who built the Mensa Ponderaria but a free slave, Marcus Varenus Defilus, who had made fortune. Marcus Varenus had furthermore two statues of his patrons placed before the tables, the bases of wich can still be seen. On one side of the Mensa Ponderaria, he built a chapel in honour of Augustus, used for the imperial workship: the Augusteum. In the center of the apse, there is a base for a statue, wich cannot have been that of the emperor, as can be clearly seen from an inscription found there.