[2904] Nat. Hist., iv, 16 (30), §102.
[2905] Hist. Rom., xxxix, 50, §2.
[2906] Ed. Wesseling, p. 463.
[2907] The Reader, Sept. 5, 1863, p. 254.
[2908] The arguments of d’Anville, intended to prove that ten maritime stades were equivalent to one Roman mile, may be found in his Traité des mesures anciennes, 1769, pp. 71-6. Everybody knows that there were stades of various lengths, one of which was one-tenth of a Roman mile (Itin. Hierosol., ed. Wesseling, p. 609); but the stade by which Strabo usually reckoned was one-eighth of a mile (Geogr., vii, 7, § 4.—λογιζομένῳ, ὡς μὲν οἱ πολλοί, τὸ μίλιον ὀκταστάδιον. Cf. Pliny, Nat. Hist., ii, 23 [21], § 85.—Stadium centum viginti quinque nostros efficit passus). See J. Wex, Métrologie grecque et rom. (trans. P. Mouat), 1886, p. 16; F. Hultsch, Griech. und röm. Metrologie, 1882, pp. 49, 59-60; and Ideler in Abhandlungen der Königlichen Akad. der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 1826 (1829), p. 15; 1827 (1830), p. 127.
[2909] The Reader, Sept. 5, 1863, p. 254.
[2910] Zeitschrift für allgemeine Erdkunde, xviii, 1865, pp. 174-5.
[2911] Cf. R. Schneider, Portus Itius, p. 10. No doubt the ancients did commonly overestimate distances; but any one who had time to go through Strabo could pick out exceptions. Thus he tells us (i, 4, §4) that the distance from Massilia to ‘the middle of Britain’ (εἰς μέσην τὴν Βρεττανικήν) is 5,000 stades, and (ii, 1, §40) that the distance from Carthage to Massilia is not more than 9,000. The latter, in a straight line, is about 10,500: the former, measured only as far as Portsmouth Harbour, about 5,200.
[2912] See p. 558, supra.
[2913] Gentleman’s Magazine, xxvi, 1846, p. 252.