the thyrsus. Along the edge of
two of the tables runs the inscription, "Made at the expense of Marcus
Varenus Diphilus, president of the college of Hercules," while the
third was erected at the expense of his wife Varena. The tables are
perforated by holes of conical shape, varying in diameter from 200 to
380 millimetres. Brass measures of capacity were fastened into each
hole, for use by buyers and sellers. They were used in a very
ingenious way, both as dry and liquid measures. The person who had
bought, for instance, half a modius of beans, or twenty-four
_sextarii_ of wine, and wanted to ascertain whether he had been
cheated in his bargain, would fill the receptacle to the proper line,
then open the valve or spicket below, and transfer the tested contents
again to his sack or flask.

The institution was accepted by the Church, and _ponderaria_ were set
up in the principal basilicas. The best set which has come down to us
is that of S. Maria in Trastevere, but there is hardly a church
without a "stone" weighing from five or ten to a hundred pounds. The
popular superstition by which these practical objects were transformed
into relics of martyrdoms is very old. Topographers and pilgrims of
the seventh century speak of a stone exhibited in the chapel of SS.
Abundius and Irenaeus, under the portico of S. Lorenzo fuori le Mura,
"which, in their ignorance, pilgrims touch and lift." They mention
also another weight, exhibited in the church of S. Stephen, near S.
Paul's, which they believed to be one of the stones with which the
martyr was killed.

In 1864 a _schola_ (a memorial and banqueting hall) was discovered in
the burial grounds adjoining the praetorian camp, which had been used
by members of a corporation called the _sodalium serrensium_, that is,
of the citizens of Serrae, a city of Samothrake, I believe. Among the
objects pertaining to the hall and its customers were two measures for
wine, a _sextarium_, and a _hemina_, marked with the monogram of
Christ and the name of the donor.[28] They are now exhibited in the
_sala dei bronzi_ of the Capitoline museum.

The hall of the citizens of Serrae, discovered in 1864, belongs to a
class of monuments very common in the suburbs of Rome. They were
called _cellae, memoriae, exedrae_, and _scholae_, and were used by
relatives and friends of the persons buried under or near them, in the
performance of expiatory ceremonies or for commemorative banquets, for
which purpose