Antiquity
The name "stone" derives from the use of stones for weights - a practice that dates back into antiquity. The ancient Hebrew Law against the carrying of "diverse weights, a large and a small" is more literally translated as "you shall not carry a stone and a stone (אבן ואבן), a large and a small". There was no "standard" stone in the ancient Jewish world, but in Roman times weights crafted to a multiple of the Roman libra (a pound of about 327.54 g) for use in commerce were often made of stone. Such weights varied in quality - 10 and 50 pound examples acquired in Italy, possibly from Pompeii, were of polished blackstone, while a 40 pound example on exhibition in Eschborn, close to the Roman frontier in Germany, was made of sandstone.
Read more about this topic: Stone (unit)
Famous quotes containing the word antiquity:
“We gladly put antiquity above our age but not posterity. Only a father doesn’t begrudge his son’s talent.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“This seems a long while ago, and yet it happened since Milton wrote his Paradise Lost. But its antiquity is not the less great for that, for we do not regulate our historical time by the English standard, nor did the English by the Roman, nor the Roman by the Greek.... From this September afternoon, and from between these now cultivated shores, those times seemed more remote than the dark ages.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)