Page:Arrian's Voyage Round the Euxine Sea Translated.djvu/176

Rh even cubits in length; and Pliny, copying profeedly from him, tranlates the word by eptem cubitorum; and Aulus Gellius does the ame, and adds, that thee even cubits were equal to 12¼ Roman feet, which would make the Greek cubit longer than it has hitherto been uppoed in any computation.

Again, the authors of the Septuagint, in decribing the height of Goliah, who is repreented to have been a man of gigantic tature tranlate the correponding Hebrew words into,. This, if undertood to be of the Greek cubit, according to common interpretation, will amount to ix feet nine inches and ix tenths of an inch; and, if we reckon according to Aulus Gellius's computation, will be even feet even inches and a quarter; both of them extraordinary heights, though neither of them exceeding credibility; as I have een a man much taller than either.

But if we diminih this, according to Mr. Barré's calculation, to four Roman feet three inches, (equal to four Englih feet one inch and a quarter,) we hall ink this boating giant into a dwarf; and probably make him much inferior in tature to his antagonit, David, whom he o much defpied.

We hould conider that the authors of the Septuagint were perons of great learning, and knowledge both in the Greek and in the Hebrew tongues; and were alo prior in date to Diocorides by 330 years, and who mut have known the real length of the Greek