Pes (unit)

A pes (plural: pedes) is an ancient Roman unit of length that roughly corresponds to a modern foot, which it is the etymological ancestor of, as "pes" literally means "foot" in Latin. In modern units, the Roman foot measured 0.971 feet (29.6 cm).[1] There are twelve unciae ("one twelfth", giving English "inch") in one pes. There are 2.5 pedes in one gradus ("step"), and two gradus to the passus ("step"), yielding 1,000 passus, or 5,000 pedis, to the mile (originally mille passus, or "1,000 steps").

See also
  • Ancient Roman weights and measures
  • History of the foot
  • Passus (length)

References
  1. Heinrich Glarean The Intellectual World of a Sixteenth-Century Musical Humanist. Chapter 8, Cambridge University Press, 2013.
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