Note 145 — Chapter IX

So described by Ricotti, who apparently has declined reducing this measurement to an intelligible quantity. The cubit of Vitruvius was of six, sixteen, or thirty-six palms, a Roman palm being nine inches and a half. Dr. Johnson defines the cubit as eighteen or twenty-one Paris inches. Such want of precision in weights, measures, and money, occasions constant and often inextricable embarrassment in mediæval history.