Page:Arrian's Voyage Round the Euxine Sea Translated.djvu/168

Rh Pliny; Julius Pollux lived about eighty years later, and Heychius about 300 years after Pliny. Is it reaonable then to uppoe that Pliny hould aiiign ten Roman feet to a meaure, univerally allowed in his own time to be equal to the height of a man, as a ftandard? Six Roman feet are, in Englih meaure, equal to 69.624 inches, or rather more than five feet nine inches and a half, which is nearly the medium ize of well proportioned men. But if Pliny etimated the height of a man at ten Roman feet, equal to nine feet eight inches Englih meaure, we mut; uppoe he borrowed his tandard from the heroic ages, and was himelf infected with the "Græciæ fabuloitas ," of which he more than once complains. But I upect the paage cited from Pliny to be corrupt. It is certainly incorrect, as it decribes the cedar, whoe extraordinary ize he records, as growing in Cyprus, when Theophraitus exprely ays, that it grew in Syria.

Mr. Barré next remarks, that the circumference of the earth, as reckoned by Poidonius, who lived in the time of Pompey, was 240,000 tadia; which number, he obewes, is to 400,000 (the number aigned by Aritotle) as 6 is to 10; and concludes from thence, that there was a difference of $2⁄5$ in the length of the tadia, by which they'repectively calculated. But Poidonius no where ays that his computation was derived from Aritotle; on the contrary, we know from Cleomedes, that it was deduced from an obervation