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444 DESTEUCTION OF THE GREEK EMPIRE than the ordinary stadium, which is 625 feet long, or rather less than a furlong. 1 I therefore suggest that when Leonard speaks of seventy stadia he makes the difference traversed about eight stadia as the word is understood by his contemporaries. Critobulus in describing the overland passage of the boats says they travelled ' certainly eight stadia ' (o-raSioi fidXicrra oktw). Probably Crito- bulus, writing a few years afterwards and mixing with Turks, Greeks, and Genoese in Pera itself, would have the best chance of learning the truth as to the actual road taken. ' Certainly eight stadia ' is what an observer who did not wish to exaggerate might estimate the distance between the present Tophana and Cassim Pasha to be, and if my suggestion as to Leonard's measure be accepted, then the two writers are substantially in accord. Barbaro gives the distance traversed as three Italian — equal to two English — miles. The evidence as to distance, therefore, is some- where between eight stadia and two miles. The evidence as to the place from which the ships started is important also. Barbaro states that they left the water at Diplokionion, a place which he describes as two miles from the city (say, one and a third English mile), and therefore not so far as the Double Columns ; Ducas, from a place ' below Diplokionion ; ' Pusculus : 2 ' Columnis haud longe a geminis ; ' Phrantzes, Ik tov oTTia-Qev fiepovs tov TdXara : a phrase which certainly does not imply that the route travelled was so far from the walls of Galata as Dolma Bagshe is. Chalcondylas and Philelphus 3 say, ' behind the hill which overhangs Galata.' It is interesting to determine where Diplokionion or the Double Column was. It has usually been considered to be Beshiktash, and Cantemir so translates it. Professor van Millingen places it rather in Dolma Bagshe bay — say, half a mile south of Beshiktash. 4 The late Dr. Dethier says 5 that the present Cabatash and Tophana were formerly called Diplokionion and that, as he expresses it, ' Columnae et incolae emigrarunt post 1 Other contemporary authors give us distances which enable us to get an approximate length of a stadium : e.g. Chalcondylas says that the walls of Constantinople were 111 stadia, or a little over 13 English miles, in circuit. Critobulus gives the total length of walls as 126 stadia and the length of the landward walls as 48. Both his figures are somewhat too high, unless they are intended to give the measure of the sinuosities of the walls. But the statements both of Chalcondylas and Critobulus as well as that of Leonard, if his intention is to represent a measure about a ninth or tenth of a furlong, are all pretty nearly accurate. 2 Book iv. line 550. 3 Book ii. line 974. 4 Byzantine Constantinople, p. 234. 5 Note to Pusculus, p. 237.