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

and made of two hundred, it retained its original name. Thus Varro, De re rustica, book 1, chapter 10, whose words are these: "Called a centuria from one hundred. A centuria is square on all four sides of 2100 feet." Furthermore, these four centuriae joined, so that there are two on each side, are called in fields divided individually and publicly, saltus woodland pastures. So he said, whom Columella, book 5, chapter 1, following, said thus: "We now call a centuria, as the same Varro says, a measure of two hundred iugera; formerly, however, it was called a centuria from one hundred iugera, but soon, being doubled, it retained the name, just as the tribes were said to be first divided into three parts from the parts of the people, which, however, now multiplied, possess the original name." Thus far he. But I think it should be noted that Varro's number, of two thousand one hundred, is corrupt due to the carelessness of copyists, because of whose fault many similar things written in numerals are lacking; for it is certain that four simple centuriae, or two doubled ones, contain fifty-seven million six hundred thousand square feet, that is, according to the modern way of counting (so that I may also use the word 'million', which younger calculators use) five million and seven hundred and sixty thousand feet. From that number of Varro, however, not more than four million and four hundred ten thousand are said. The passage, therefore, is to be restored so that it contains the number of two thousand four hundred, and it will square. A saltus is the last, consisting of four hundred iugera, as is gathered from the aforementioned. And these are without controversy.

But as to the pes foot (to return to the foot), I know that it has been disputed for a long time among the most learned men of our age what its true measure was. For to omit the inanities of some who have tried to present I know not what trifles about barley grains, which were even rejected by the ancients; likewise those things which Budeus, an otherwise learned and excellent man, handed down about his Parisian foot, which is rejected by all since it is known to have nothing in common with the Roman one: Leonardus Portius of Vicenza, truly a learned man, the first of all our age who wrote about this matter, handed down the measure of the Colotian foot as true, since no other appeared at that time. That Colotian foot, however, was taken, as I believe, from the marble base of the sepulcher of Gnaeus Cossutius the sculptor (which base was once in the gardens of Angelus Colotius, at the roots of the Pincian Hill, a truly most learned man, from whom the name 'Colotian foot' comes; but now it is kept in the house of the noble Marius Delphinus, having been acquired in years past from Gentile, his brother,