Lucae Paeti ... de mensuris, et ponderibus Romanis, et Graecis

A woodcut depicts a decorative drop cap 'I' featuring floral and foliate scrollwork.IT is now sufficiently established from those things which have been handed down by the most eloquent men of both ages, that the Pes foot holds the first place among all lesser and greater measures in Roman metrics, by which lengths, breadths, and heights are measured. For all smaller measures terminate in it, and all greater measures begin from it. Indeed, the ancient wisdom, starting from the breadth of a finger, constructed a Palmus palm out of four of them, because as many fingers proceed from a palm. And from four palms, that is sixteen fingers, they created a Pes, constructing one most perfect number from two perfect numbers, namely six and ten. For ten is considered perfect by all, as it pleased Aristotle in his Problemata Problems (Book 15, question 3), and as Vitruvius (Book 3, chapter 1) and Martianus Capella in his De Nuptiis Philologiae On the Marriage of Philology (Book 7) attest. Six, however, is also called perfect by mathematicians, as the same Vitruvius and Martianus Capella demonstrate. Regarding this Pes, Columella (Book 5, chapter 1) wrote as follows: "Every measure of an area is encompassed by the pedal measure, which is sixteen fingers." The ancients likewise divided this foot, just as they did almost all other things, into twelve Unciae inches, establishing the As unit from it, in such a way that for every three inches they comprised four fingers, as can be gathered from Frontinus in what he wrote concerning aqueducts, saying thus: "The finger is, as is agreed, the sixteenth part of a foot, the inch the twelfth." He handed down the same in his work on boundaries.