Page:Arrian's Voyage Round the Euxine Sea Translated.djvu/191

Rh the length of the tadium by one foot and 875 decimal parts, equal to 22.5 inches, amounting to more than 15 feet in the extent of an Englih mile.

The Bihop next lays it down, that the opinion of the Greek foot being to the Roman in the proportion of 25 to 24 was erroneous, though current among the Romans themelves. But it is difficult to uppoe that perons of rank, cience, and education among the Romans were ignorant of the difference between the Greek and the Roman foot, when we conider the intimate connection which ubited between the two countries; or that Pliny, perhaps the mot learned and philoophical man of the age in which he lived, and who, as appears from works of his, publihed by himelf, and till extant, betowed much labour on geographical reearches, would aign 625 feet to a tadium, when he mut know that 600 only was the-proper quantity, and that too in a paage, wherein he was peaking of the tadium only, without any reference to the mile.,

Nor can I admit with the learned Prelate, that the Romans, even in their popular valuation of the Greek meaures, would be apt to reckon eight Olympic tadia to be exactly equal to their own mile, taking no account of the fraction mentioned by Polybius, uppoing that uch an addition was neceary to complete the true extent of the mile.

Can we uppoe this to have been the cae with thoe perons to whom the care of the menuration of thee ditances was committed, when we are told by Polybius, not at econd-hand, as in the quotation from Strabo, but in a paage now extant in his original