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The Pes Monetalis and the Pes Drusianus in Xanten

It is just over one hundred years since Friedrich Hultsch published the second and enlarged edition of his Metrologie, so that it would seem appropriate, in view of the current discussion on Roman town-planning, to proffer some observations on one of the best-known, yet to some extent little researched, Roman towns in Germany. Several recent articles in this journal have highlighted the fact that much effort has been expended trying to understand the intricacies of Roman planning, both in the civil and in the military context. They have also reiterated the point that one may not take it for granted that a given metric measurement may be simply divided by (say) o · 296 in order to provide a measurement in terms of so many ‘Roman feet’. The imperial and metric weights and measures are the regulated quantities of a modern era obsessed with standardization; one cannot expect such a rigorous uniformity when dealing with Roman standards in the north-west provinces, often based, as they were, on a wooden measurement-rod. However, when confronted with an excavated building or, on a grander scale, a whole town, it is the task of the excavator to examine whether or not a systematic plan on the part of the Roman architect or surveyor could have existed. More often than not there will have been one. The problem then is to identify not only whether the standard foot or the Drusian foot was used, but also whether differences within the length of these measurements themselves are discernible. Only by accurately documenting a great number of buildings on an equally great number of sites can one hope to make good the limited amount of evidence which the ancient authorities have left us.