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There was a time in this country, even in this country, when a boy or girl went to an institution of higher learning for only one reason: to get an education. And now! Stadia and bowls instead of laboratories and classrooms. Physical perfection has become a fetish and that is being highly commercialized.
I deserve as much credit for that retreat, boy, as Xenophon did for his retreat with the Ten Thousand. It is true, I had not thirty-four thousand, six hundred and fifty stadia to retreat over; but acts are to be estimated more by quality, than by quantity. The best things are always of an impromptu character; and, generally, they are on a small scale.
Xenophon, and those with him, telling the sick men that a party would come to their relief next day, proceeded on their march, but before they had gone four stadia they found other soldiers resting by the way in the snow, and covered up with it, no guard being stationed over them. They roused them up, but they said that the head of the army was not moving forward.
Leaving the palace and passing out across the three harbours, you came to a wall which began at the sea and went all round: this was everywhere distant fifty stadia from the largest zone or harbour, and enclosed the whole, the ends meeting at the mouth of the channel which led to the sea.
Posidonius constructed an orrery, which exhibited the diurnal motions of the sun, moon, and five planets. Posidonius calculated the circumference of the earth to be two hundred and forty thousand stadia, by a different method from Eratosthenes. Hence the great Greek astronomers were unable to realize their theories.
If the horsemen were indeed in pursuit of them, they must ride through the water to reach them; and scarcely three stadia lower down, the river grew wider and ran through a marshy tract of country; the only channel was near the western bank, and horsemen attempting to get to it ran the risk of foundering in the mud. If the boat could but get as far as that reach, much would be gained.
The dimensions of the ship are stated with Munchausenian precision at five stadia by two say, half by one-fifth of an English mile.
Thus Archimedes starts out with the preliminary assumption that the circumference of the earth is less than three million stadia. It must be understood that this assumption is purely for the sake of argument. Archimedes expressly states that he takes this number because it is "ten times as large as the earth has been supposed to be by certain investigators."
In the center of each portion of the city is an enclosed space the one occupied by the royal palace, a building of vast extent and great strength; in the other stands the temple of Jupiter Belus, with its brazen gates, remaining in my time: it is a square structure; each side measures two stadia.
Ptolemy's determinations are, therefore, inferior in accuracy to those of his illustrious predecessor Eratosthenes, who made the distance from the sacred promontory in Spain to the eastern mouth of the Ganges to be seventy thousand stadia. Ptolemy also wrote on Optics, the Planisphere, and Astrology. It is not often given to an author to endure for so many ages; perhaps, indeed, few deserve it.
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