hma to 100; of course t As a proof, no less eri- only in an approximative result: whereas the author detect determinate numerical ratios, and to deduce fr dence of original correspondence and derivative adjust the two systems. He cites distinct passages from Hero and Did attest an exact ratio (as 5: 6) of the Roman foot, tærian foot employed by the kings of Pergamus in As well as to the Ptolemaic foot in Egypt: and this Phile probably the same with the royal Persian or Babylon ployed under the Persian empire. But the ratio allege between the Grecian foot and the Babylonian foot re two passages; of the sufficiency of which the reader Herodotus gives the height and thickness of the wall in royal cubits: he then adds-o de Baσiantos #ĥxus TO πήχεος μέζων τρίσι δακτυλίοισι (i. 178). Again, the Lucian's Kataplus, evidently copying from Herodot (c. 16), upon the expression of Lucian, oλ xe Bo lowsὉ γὰρ βασιλικός πήχυς ἔχει ὑπὲρ τὸν ἰδιωτικὸν κ dakrúλous. Upon which M. Boeckh remarks, p. 21 expression pérpios xvs, as Ideler and others have alre nothing can be meant except the well-known commo Greeks, of 1 Olympic feet:" and he adds that Idele this respect confirmed by the Scholiast on Lucian (4 p. 214). Wurm (de Ponderibus § 56), adopts th struction of the passage: but in spite of the conc many able expositors, I venture to contend that they Herodotus a meaning which his words do not bear contrasts the royal cubit with the moderate or ordinar speaking purely and simply of Babylonian measures nothing whatever respecting the identity of the ordina cubit with the Grecian cubit. M. Boeckh has shewn very instructively, in the 1 chapters of the Metrologie, that there were in Assyria and in Egypt, two distinct scales of length-a royal c cubit-and a common cubit: the former longer by a tity than the latter, and employed principally for sol purposes. Now it is plain, when Herodotus calls t "longer by three finger-breadths or daktyls than the author professes to deduce from them eviive adjustment between fol and Didymus, which man foot, to the Philenus in Asia Minor, as his Philetarian foot is Babylonian foot, emtio alleged of 2:3 n foot rests only upon The reader shall judge. f the walls of Babylon ως πῆχυς τοῦ μετρίου ἐστὶ gain, the Scholiast on Herodotus, comments ο πήχει βασιλικό, 25 10 ἰδιωτικὸν καὶ κοινὸν τρεῖς ks, p. 214: "By the have already observed, n common cubit of the that Ideler's view is in Lucian (Metrol. xii. 2. adopts the same conthe concurrence of so hat they all put upon not bear. Herodotus ordinary cubit: he's easures: he intimates ordinary Babylonian n the 13th and 14th Assyria, in Palestine, royal cubit or sacred ›r by a definite quanfor solemn or public calls the royal cubit than the moderat cubit," that the direct comparison is between two distinct Babylonian measures. On what ground are we to presume an implied identity between the smaller Babylonian measure and a Grecian measure of the same denomination? I say, designedly, identity, or precise equality: the point which M. Boeckh's argument requires him to make out. For if nothing more be meant than approximative equality, this is a matter which I willingly concede. It is to be recollected that the cubit and the foot, having a natural standard, cannot differ very much from each other in any two countries, though they will always differ to a certain extent, unless we suppose an intentional derivation or adjustment. Any English traveller visiting France during the last century, and describing the length of a room or a building, would probably mention the number of feet as reported to him, without noticing the minute difference between the French foot and the English foot. But if he found that the French government, in measuring farms for the assessment of the land-tax, employed a special foot measure, called the royal foot, three inches longer than the ordinary foot of France, he would be struck with this fact, and would insert in his journal—“The royal foot is three inches longer than the ordinary foot." But he would not mean thereby to assert, nor would any reader be authorised to infer, that the ordinary foot of France was equal to the ordinary foot of England. Just such is the declaration of Herodotus. All which we can legitimately deduce from it, is, that the "moderate cubit" of Babylon differed from the Grecian cubit no more than the ordinary cubit of one nation might naturally differ from the ordinary cubit of another. Nor is it indeed certain that there was one common cubit in Greece: meaning always a measure adapted to one precise standard. That the Samians had a cubit of their own, we know from Herodotus (ii. 168), who says that the Egyptian cubit was equal to the Samian. M. Boeckh admits that the Samian cubit was completely different from the common Grecian cubit (xiii. 2. p. 221) of course therefore the Samian foot measure must have differed in the same proportion: a fact not easy to be reconciled with the statement of M. Boeckh in another place (xvi. 1. p. 281) "that no other Grecian foot than the Olympic foot, or the foot of the Olympic stadium, existed." What evidence is t that the Olympic standard of the foot-measure was a the countless autonomous communities of Greece? V regard Samos as the solitary case of exception? L differ in this respect from cubic measures or weigh a natural standard: but the unit of weight or of cap determined by the special dictum of law. An auto munity, on first establishing a scale of weight, bei necessity of making some arbitrary selection, mi borrow the Euboic or the ginæan scale, prevalen neighbours: but many distinct standards of the foo proceeding from the natural standard of the human f minutely differing from the rest, might co-exist in G any serious inconvenience. We are not to presume cise identity, or universal adoption of one common sta we can prove the fact by some positive evidence. Until the abundant erudition of M. Boeckh can evidence, I must contend that he is not entitled to tre pic foot as an universally adopted Grecian foot: st entitled to consider Herodotus as having alluded to foot, and the cubit founded upon it, when he sa Babylonian cubit was three daktyls longer than t cubit." Unfortunately, these two unauthorized ass at the bottom of all the elaborate calculations in th respecting the Grecian and Babylonian long measuresleading after all only to an approximative result, whic is obliged to excuse by appealing to the inaccurate proceedings of the ancients. Such mechanical inaccu admit; and if sufficient positive testimony were pro tentional correspondence between two distinct met in the ancient world, I should not reject the testi ground that details of the proceeding had not precise to the attested designs of the framers. But here we positive testimony: we are called upon to infer intenti tion, or relationship between two systems, merely fr in the results; and for such an inference nothing sl harmony-no approximative analogies-will suffice. cially is this true with respect to the foot and the cub vidence is there to prove ence. its oeckh can supply such led to treat the Olymn foot: still less is be alluded to this Olympic en he said that "the er than the moderate prized assumptions lie ons in the Metrologie measures-calculations ult, which M. Boeckh accurate mechanical 1 inaccuracy I freely ere produced, of inet metrical systems e testimony on the precisely conformed here we are without intentional adapta erely from harmony hing short of exact ffice. More espe cubit; measures which always have been and always will be nearly equal, even in countries the most widely separated. The most remarkable circumstance which characterizes the long measures as well as the weights, of Greece, Asia, and Egypt, is the prevalence of the same scale of division- the cubit, the foot, the span, the palm, and the dactyl. Throughout all the wide extent of territory here spoken of, this same scale of division prevailed, pointedly distinguished from the uncial or duodecimal division of the foot which we find in Italy and Sicily. That so precise a conformity in the metrical scale argues one common origin, and that Greece was in this respect a borrower from the East, I see no reason to doubt. But that the actual standard of the lengths measured was identical and derivative, I cannot believe until I see it proved. M. Boeckh nevertheless permits himself to assert positively-" As the Grecian long measure has been already shewn to have existed in the earliest times in Egypt, which had a community of system with the Chaldæans, the derivation of the Grecian measure either from the East or from Egypt no longer admits of a doubt." (xvi. 1. p. 281). I trust that the complete conviction which this sentence breathes will induce M. Boeckh to re-examine and improve the very precarious evidence on which alone it now reposes. As I have felt myself compelled to call in question many references upon which M. Boeckh seems implicitly to rely, I will notice one case in which he seems to me to impugn without reason the testimony of one of his own best authorities. In treating of the royal or Philetarian foot, applied in the measurements of Asia Minor under the kings of Pergamus, he cites a passage from Heron, in which the ratio of the Philetarian foot to the Roman foot is given as 6: 5-given in plain language and with precise fractions (Metrol. xii. 2; p. 215). But M. Boeckh finds that this ratio does not exactly comport with that which he imagines himself to have discovered as the original determining ratio of the Babylonian foot to the Grecian foot: viz. 32. Accordingly, he denies the rigid accuracy of the valuation given by Hero: he says" Assuredly the estimate of the Philetarian foot in reference to the Roman foot as 6: 5, is not precise, because it is certain that neither of them was determined with any view to |