DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.8#0011
Í xi )
rnitted to us as being ascertained by the hecàtompedòn
Parthenon at Athens. And our Countryman, Mr.
Greaves, professor of astronomy at Oxford, something
more than a century ago, took great pains when at
Rome, to discover the trae Roman foot amongst those
monuments ; to this end, he attempted to ascertain the
measure, from one mile stone to another, but baffled
by their unequal stations, he could not depend on that
criterion, and therefore decided, after diligent researches,
in favour of the Cossutian foot, the least of the three,
which is to our foot, as 967 to 1000 : not once suspecting
but that the foot, by which Pliny, Vitruvius and other
Roman authors, calculated, was One or other of these
monumental feet, viz, either 967, 972, or 986 of
1000 parts into which, our foot is imagined to be divi-
ded. Whereas about 732 of 1000 will be proved, in the
following treatise, to be the size of the foot used by those
Roman authors, in common with almost every civilized
nation, in theirs and the preceding ages.
The many incongruities discovered in dimensions
recorded by Vitruvius, Pliny, and Herodotus, in the ac-
ceptation of any of the monumental feet, had long since
convinced me, these authors must have made their cal-
culations by a foot measure very different from these
and the Greek foot published in our tables ; since by
the Roman Cossutian, and the modern Greek foot, it is
impossible to reconcile some of their reported dimen-
sions, to common sense. Under this well-grounded
persuasion, I had bent my endeavours to discover, if
possible, what the size of the foot could be, which these
authors used ; but, till lately, nothing occurred to me,
of a satisfactory import. The recent discoveries, how-
ever, made by the French Savants in Egypt* gave me a
Β 2 hint
rnitted to us as being ascertained by the hecàtompedòn
Parthenon at Athens. And our Countryman, Mr.
Greaves, professor of astronomy at Oxford, something
more than a century ago, took great pains when at
Rome, to discover the trae Roman foot amongst those
monuments ; to this end, he attempted to ascertain the
measure, from one mile stone to another, but baffled
by their unequal stations, he could not depend on that
criterion, and therefore decided, after diligent researches,
in favour of the Cossutian foot, the least of the three,
which is to our foot, as 967 to 1000 : not once suspecting
but that the foot, by which Pliny, Vitruvius and other
Roman authors, calculated, was One or other of these
monumental feet, viz, either 967, 972, or 986 of
1000 parts into which, our foot is imagined to be divi-
ded. Whereas about 732 of 1000 will be proved, in the
following treatise, to be the size of the foot used by those
Roman authors, in common with almost every civilized
nation, in theirs and the preceding ages.
The many incongruities discovered in dimensions
recorded by Vitruvius, Pliny, and Herodotus, in the ac-
ceptation of any of the monumental feet, had long since
convinced me, these authors must have made their cal-
culations by a foot measure very different from these
and the Greek foot published in our tables ; since by
the Roman Cossutian, and the modern Greek foot, it is
impossible to reconcile some of their reported dimen-
sions, to common sense. Under this well-grounded
persuasion, I had bent my endeavours to discover, if
possible, what the size of the foot could be, which these
authors used ; but, till lately, nothing occurred to me,
of a satisfactory import. The recent discoveries, how-
ever, made by the French Savants in Egypt* gave me a
Β 2 hint