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The ancient Roman units of measurement were built on the Hellenic system with Egyptian, Hebrew, and Mesopotamian influences. The Roman units were comparatively consistent and well documented.
Modern metrologists have found the Roman foot to be 16⁄28 of the Nippur cubit.
Notes
The Roman acre is the squared Roman arpent, 120 pedes by 120 pedes. This equals 14 400 square feet or about 0.126 hectares.
The Romans also had a unit of area called a quinaria, which was used to measure the cross-sectional area of pipes. One quinaria was considered to be roughly 4.2 cm².
The Roman jar, so-called "amphora quadrantal" is the cubic foot. The congius is half-a-foot cubed. The Roman sester is the sixth of a congius.
Like the jar, the Roman bushel or "quadrantal" is one cubic foot. It is almost 26.027 litres. One-third of a quandrantal is a Roman peck.
The Roman pound is exactly three quarters of the Greek mine.
Thus the Greek and Roman drachm is related by the ratio 32 to 25.
One and a half ounces was called by Romans "sescuncia". Some of these nouns were used to designate Roman bronze coins.
The Julian calendar was introduced in 45 BC replacing the earlier Roman calendar. In the Julian calendar as in the Gregorian calendar an ordinary year is 365 days long and a leap year is 366 days long. The difference is which years are leap years. In the Julian calendar every fourth year is a leap year. The Gregorian calendar uses a more complex algorithm to more closely approximate the length of the tropical year.
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Last updated on Monday September 24, 2007 at 05:23:47 PDT (GMT -0700)
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