Vatican Museums

Abudia Megiste – freedwoman and wife of the dedicant, who also buries the 8 year old son, member of the Esquilina tribe – was a negotiatrix frumentaria et leguminaria at the Scala Mediana. This name, not otherwise known, is connected by most scholars to the Regio XIII (the Aventine Hill and its slopes), the site where the Porticus Fabaria (from faba, “bean”) and the Vicus Frumentarius where located: places for the storage, distribution and sale of pulses and wheat, linked to the nearby fluvial trade ports. The Scala Mediana should have been connected with these: a short cut from the banks of the Tiber to the top of the Aventine Hill, whose exact location is a subject of debate among scholars. It may have been the Scala Cassi, located according to sources between the Forum Pistorum (bread market) and the Porticus Fabaria, along the Lungotevere Aventino, perhaps also known generically as the scala usque in montem Aventinum “steps up to the Aventine hill”.