Two notes: Roman Legionaires had regular legs -- a pace is two steps
(left foot to left foot) so each step was 0.8 yards long. The
calibration procedure involved using a lot of soldiers and taking the
average pace as the official pace. In any measurement, the error is
reduced by a factor of the square root of the number of inidividual
measurements made -- 100 soldiers reduces the error to 10% of the
error of using one soldier. And Rome had plenty of soldiers to work
into their average.
HTH,
Donald.
> Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2001 00:33:06 +0000
> From: Michael Hargreave Mawson <OC@46thFoot.com>
[snips]
> The Imperial Mile ought to be pretty close to a kilometre. The word
> "mile" comes from the Latin "mille passuum" meaning a thousand paces.
> According to the OED, however, the Imperial Roman Mile has been
> calculated at 1618 yards, which must mean that Roman Legionaries had
> *very* long legs. I wonder how they were calibrated?
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