The scale, with wooden and rope parts reconstructed, presents a rod or beam, tapered toward the ends for insertion of two bronze cones ending with two hooks from which hang two square plates by means of eight ropes. The corners of the plates have four pins that enlarge on the top into small wings in a cross form in whose centre is a ring through which passes, with a hook, the ropes connecting the beam and the plates. The beam receives the insertion of a supporting column (missing) that has on its top a bronze element with four holes drilled in its centre and which probably had a small iron rod with the function of a dial for noting the oscillations of the scale.
The scale was discovered in a villa rustica in 1903 (Casale-Bianco 1979, p. 35, n. 29). Its reconstruction was conceived in 1912 by Vittorio Spinazzola, falling upon Matteo Della Corte to complete the work, whose technical component was undertaken by the conservator Domenico Carotenuto, on the basis of a similar scale found in 1904 in house number 29 of Insula 16, Regio VI.