Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Statera

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rich, Anthony (1849). The illustrated companion to the Latin dictionary, and Greek lexicon. p. vi. OCLC 894670115. https://archive.org/details/illustratedcompa00rich. 

STATE'RA. A steel-yard; an instrument of much later invention than the balance (libra). It consisted of the yard (scapus) divided into fractional parts by points (puncta), and suspended from above by a hook or chain, called the handle (ansa). The short end of the yard was furnished with a hook, to which the objects to be weighed were fixed, and sometimes with a scale (lancula) for holding them; the longest end, on the other side of the centre of revolution, with a sliding weight (aequipondium). Vitruv. x. 3. 4. The whole of these particulars mentioned by Vitruvius are exhibited in the annexed figures (Statera/1.1), both from originals discovered at Pompeii.

2. Sometimes used without discrimination for libra, a balance. Pet. Sat. 35. 4. Suet. Vesp. 25.

3. A curricle bar or yoke, placed across the withers of a pair of horses, and to which the pole (temo) was attached, as in the annexed example (Statera/3.1) from a painting at Pompeii. Stat. Sylv. iv. 3. 35.

4. A kind of dish, probably of a flat circular form, like the scale appended to the steel-yard in the first example. Corn. Nepos. ap. Plin. H. N. xxxiii. 52.

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  Statera/1.1
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  Statera/3.1