Denique cur Homines ramos natura parare
Non potuit, pedibus qui pontum per vada possent
Transire, & magnos manibus divellere monteis?
Lucret. L. 1. Carm. 200.
[] Haud facile fit ut quisquam & ingentes corporis vires, & ingenium subtile habeat. Diodor. Sic. L. 17.
[c] Altho’ we read of Giants before Noah’s Flood, Gen. vi. 4. and more plainly afterwards in Numb. xiii. 33. Yet there is great Reason to think the Size of Man was always the same from the Creation. For as to the Nephilim or Giants, in Gen. vi. the Ancients vary about them; some taking them for great Atheists, and Monsters of Impiety, Rapine, Tyranny, and all Wickedness, as well as of monstrous Stature, according as indeed the Hebrew Signification allows.
And as for the Nephilim in Numb. xiii. which were evidently Men of a Gigantick Size, it must be considered, that it is very probable, the Fears and Discontentments of the Spies might add somewhat thereunto.
But be the Matter as it will, it is very manifest, that in both these Places, Giants are spoken of as Rarities, and Wonders of the Age, not of the common Stature. And such Instances we have had in all Ages; excepting some fabulous Relations; such as I take to be that of Theutobotchus, who is said to have been dug up, Anno 1613, and to have been higher than the Trophies, and 26 Feet long; and no better I suppose the Giants to have been, that Ol. Magnus gives an Account of in his 5ᵗʰ Book, such as Harthen, and Starchater, among the Men; and among the Women, reperta est (saith he) puella——in capite vulnerata, ac mortua, induta chlamyde purpureâ, longitudinis cubitorum 50, latitudinis inter humeros quatuor. Ol. Mag. Hist. L. 5. c. 2.
But as for the more credible Relations of Goliath (whose height was 6 Cubits and a Span, 1 Sam. xvii. 4. which according to the late curious and learned Lord Bishop of Peterborough is somewhat above 11 Feet English, vid. Bishop Cumberland of Jewish Weights and Measures) of Maximinus the Emperor, who was 9 Feet high, and others in Augustus, and other Reigns, of about the same Height: To which we may add the Dimensions of a Skeleton, dug up lately in the Place of a Roman Camp near St. Albans, by an Urn inscribed, Marcus Antoninus; of which an Account is given by Mr. Cheselden, who judgeth by the Dimensions of the Bones, that the Person was 8 Foot high, vid. Philos. Trans. Nᵒ. 333. These antique Examples and Relations, I say, we can match, yea, out-do, with modern Examples; of which we have divers in J. Ludolph. Comment. in Hist. Æthiop. L. 1. c. 2. §. 22. Magus, Conringius, Dr. Hakewill, and others. Which later relates from Nannez, of Porters and Archers belonging to the Emperor of China, of 15 Feet high; and others from Purchas, of 10 and 12 Feet high, and more. See the learned Author’s Apolog. p. 208.
These indeed exceed what I have seen in England; but in 1684, I my self measur’d an Irish Youth, said to be not 19 Years old, who was 7 Feet near 8 Inches, and in 1697, a Woman who was 7 Feet 3 inches in Height.