Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;EWC3, post: 3700458, member: 93416&quot;]Many thanks indeed. Yes, I read Cumo, and thought about getting in touch with her, as she is just up the road a way from me. I found her work very useful – but also too post-modern. She seems a Latour fan.&nbsp; To cut a very long story short, I fear she, Latour and Maecianus are all pretty much on the same page, but its the wrong page. They almost seem to want to confuse us. See the criticism of Latour&nbsp; <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_Action_(book)" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_Action_(book)" rel="nofollow">here</a></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Case in point. There is no mystery at all about why we do not use practical weight systems based upon 11ths. Cumo seems to assist Maecianus in sending us on a wild goose chase</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>But if I have it correctly, at this point in the text Maecianus is calling a libra an as. In which case an uncia is quite a heavy item of c. 27g. Way way too big to be the smallest weight unit for very many practical purposes.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Does the the Distributio make it clear it is writing about 2nd century AD currency here?&nbsp; Can anyone cite the point in the text where that is made clear?&nbsp; I fear a weight of a libra-as of c. 327g (an as from maybe 268 BC) is being conflated, by both Maecianus and Cumo, with the value of a 10g copper coin-as of 160 AD.&nbsp; That would of course be absurd, a joke, like expecting a modern English &quot;pound&quot; coin to weigh 454g, or 350g, when in fact it weighs about 9g.</p><p><br /></p><p>Rob T[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

Your name or email address:

Do you already have an account?

• No, create an account now.
• Yes, my password is:
• Forgot your password?

Stay logged in