GEOGRAPHICAL LATITUDE. 781 



how this first essay compares with those made recently with the appli- 

 cation of all the meaus for securing accuracy known to modern science. 

 The comparison is not however so easy as at first tho.ught appears 

 and leading specialists are by no means in unison on the matter. The 

 real difficulty lies in our not knowing the value of the stadium which 

 was employed as the standard of measure.' In order to bring harmony 

 into classical accounts of distances, French authorities adopted the 

 idea that thera were different standards in use, even to the number of 

 eight.^ German investigators were rather inclined to scout this 

 method as an easy one for avoiding a dilemma, while an English writer 

 puts all differences down to ignorance on the part of the Greeks, and 

 adds: " The more frequented the route, the more populous the country 

 through which it passed, the more civilized and lettered the people, 

 the more nearly we find the reported distance to approach that stand- 

 ard [600 Gr. feet] of the stadium."^ But the excavations at Olympia 

 have revealed the fact that the stadium there was 192.27 meters long, 

 instead of 176.76 meters, as was earlier thought to be the case;"* and 

 Dr. Dorpfeld, one of the directors of the excavations, assures the 

 writer that this length differs from that of all other stadii found in Greece. 

 This proves at least that there existed in Greece itself different stand- 

 ards; but whether there were five or eight, or more or less,^ it is not 

 within the i)roviuce of this article to decide. The idea seems to be 

 modern ; for, though some classical writers seem to employ different 

 standards, they do not expressly mention the existence of such. Hum- 

 boldt says he finds the first trace of the opinion broached by Mossen 

 Janne Ferrer in a letter to Columbus on the means of tracing with pre- 

 cision the line of demarkation which should divide the globe between 

 Spain and Portugal.^ 



With these preliminary remarks we turn to the conclusions arrived 

 at, which vary according to the hypothesis of each writer. The two 

 extremes are represented by General Baeyer and Sprenger. The first 

 finds an error of only one seven-hundredth of the distance measured, 

 and says this proves that the ancients went to work with great care and 

 understood quite well how to measure,'^ while Sj^reuger maintains that 

 Eratosthenes simply re-discovered the method for measuring the size 

 of the earth, and proved it mathematically; that he however made no 



'Quant k sa division du degr6 en 700 stadea, elle n'a pour nous aucun sens, puisque 

 rieu ne determine le stade dont il s'est servi" (Delanibre, Base du syst^me ni6trique, 

 1, 3). " Auch wissen wir uicht ob er jigyptiscbe oder olympische Stadien meinte, 

 Oder ob er wie Ptolemaus zwischen beiden keinen Unterscbied macbto" (Sprenger, 

 Ausland, 1867, p. 1065). 



^Ideler, Zach, Mon. Cor., May, 1811, p. 456. 



'.Journal R. G. S., 1839, ix, 11. 



*Lelewel, G^og. du moyen-4ge, xxi. 



^Ideler, Zach's Mon. Cor., May, 1811, p. 4.56. Grosskurd's Strabo, Vorrede, i. §. 10. 

 p. Ixiii. 



"Humboldt, G6og. du xv"'« sifecle, ii, 327-328. 



'Behun's Geog. Jahrb., iii, 1870, i>. 155. Add quotations from Ft. i, p. 17a. 



