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

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OF THE GREEK STADIUM.
167

fore Pliny; Julius Pollux lived about eighty years later, and Heſychius about 300 years after Pliny. Is it reaſonable then to ſuppoſe that Pliny ſhould aiiign ten Roman feet to a meaſure, univerſally allowed in his own time to be equal to the height of a man, as a ftandard? Six Roman feet are, in Engliſh meaſure, equal to 69.624 inches, or rather more than five feet nine inches and a half, which is nearly the medium ſize of well proportioned men. But if Pliny eſtimated the height of a man at ten Roman feet, equal to nine feet eight inches Engliſh meaſure, we muſt; ſuppoſe he borrowed his ſtandard from the heroic ages, and was himſelf infected with the "Græciæ fabuloſitas[1]," of which he more than once complains. But I ſuſpect the paſſage cited from Pliny to be corrupt. It is certainly incorrect, as it deſcribes the cedar, whoſe extraordinary ſize he records, as growing in Cyprus, when Theophraitus expreſſly ſays[2], that it grew in Syria.

Mr. Barré next remarks, that the circumference of the earth, as reckoned by Poſidonius, who lived in the time of Pompey, was 240,000 ſtadia; which number, he obſewes, is to 400,000 (the number aſſigned by Ariſtotle) as 6 is to 10; and concludes from thence, that there was a difference of 2/5 in the length of the ſtadia, by which they'reſpectively calculated. But Poſidonius no where ſays that his computation was derived from Ariſtotle; on the contrary, we know from Cleomedes[3], that it was deduced from an

  1. Lib. iv. Argum. Lib. xii. cap. i. lib. v. cap. i.
  2. Theophraſt. lib. v. cap. 9.
  3. Lib. i. cap. 26.
obſervation