The bema was the distance between successive steps and was roughly two and a half feet.¹

These human pedometers were called bematists² and were able to stay within 1/100 of a bema with each step!³

It is a persistent legend that Eratosthenes⁴ (276 BC – 194 BC) hired bematists to measure the distance from Alexandria to Syene as part of his famous effort to determine the size of the Earth⁵.

The Romans, in contrast to the Greeks, defined a pace (Latin passus) as the distance that would bring a land surveyor (Latin agrimensore) back to the same foot (i.e. roughly five feet)⁶.

Pari passu^7,8 is now used as a legal phrase with the general meaning of “on equal footing”.

But that is okay as there is a word for such invented linguistic miscegenations – it’s called macaronic⁹.

And as any Italian restaurateur will tell you, the best way to top off a meal of macaroni like this is with a slice of pari passu, that delicious Italian dessert made with mascarpone cheese¹⁰.

But then that would be a malapropism and that’s another story altogether ¹¹.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_units_of_measurement

2. Online Oxford English Dictionary at http://dictionary.oed.com/

3. http://www.fig.net/pub/athens/papers/wshs1/WSHS1_1_Lelgemann.pdf

4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes

5. http://astrosun2.astro.cornell.edu/academics/courses//astro201/eratosthenes.htm

6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_units_of_measurement

7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pari_passu

8. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pari_passu

9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macaronic_language

10. http://www.heavenlytiramisu.com/

11. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malapropism