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[German version] As a state magistrate, the mensarius exercized the function of a money-changer or banker, and was responsible above all for state payments and expenditures. Some Greek city-states, e.g. Tenos in the 1st cent. BC (Cic. Flacc. 44) had such official bankers constantly available: they were called δημόσιοι τραπεζῖται ( dēmósioi trapezîtai). At Rome, this function existed only in exceptional situations, as during a debt crisis in the 4th cent. B.C. (352 B.C., Liv. 7,21,5ff.) and during the Second Punic War ( triumviri mensarii, Liv. 23,21,6; 24,18,12; 26,36,8). In ad…

[German version] About 70 wax tablets were found in 1959 in a house, which may have been the seat of a guild ( collegium [1]), on the Agro Murecine bordering on the river harbour of Pompeii on the Sarno. After the first incomplete edition by C. Giordano and F. Sbordone an exemplary edition was published by G. Camodeca in 2 volumes. The tablets belonged to a group of four freedmen or sons of freedmen, among whom C. Sulpicius Faustus and C. Sulpicius Cinnamus above all played an important role. As one of the tablets con…