the length of the ſtadium by one foot and 875 decimal parts, equal to 22.5 inches, amounting to more than 15 feet in the extent of an Englſih mile.
The Biſhop 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 themſelves. But it is difficult to ſuppoſe that perſons of rank, ſcience, and education among the Romans were ignorant of the difference between the Greek and the Roman foot, when we conſider the intimate connection which ſubſiſted between the two countries; or that Pliny, perhaps the moſt learned and philoſophical man of the age in which he lived, and who, as appears from works of his, publiſhed by himſelf, and ſtill extant, beſtowed much labour on geographical reſearches, would aſſign 625 feet to a ſtadium, when he muſt know that 600 only was the-proper quantity, and that too in a paſſage, wherein he was ſpeaking of the ſtadium 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 meaſures, would be apt to reckon eight Olympic ſtadia to be exactly equal to their own mile, taking no account of the fraction mentioned by Polybius, ſuppoſing that ſuch an addition was neceſſary to complete the true extent of the mile.
Can we ſuppoſe this to have been the caſe with thoſe perſons to whom the care of the menſuration of theſe diſtances was committed, when we are told by Polybius, not at ſecond-hand, as in the quotation from Strabo, but in a paſſage now extant in his
