One arrow through a night and a day

A seal concerning the missile. Let this writing too end in some ancient and learning-loving tale, following those who have led: the tale of a bow and a missile. One missile, carried through a whole night and day, can come down as far as twenty-five thousand stades, if the motion were continuous.

About the flight of the missile it would be like this. Let some commensurate men, not more than ten, stand toward a mark of a measured plethron. Let them have bows ready, and let a missile lie on the string, so that the first hits the mark and a second throws straightway after him, and a third in sequence, and the others likewise, the second always resting his throw only so long as the first man's missile takes to reach the mark. I have seen some trying it, and I have the history from trial.

The number of the stades has been gathered somehow thus. Six plethra make a stadion. One missile was carried for each plethron. The missiles being numbered into one hour, not more than six thousand were sent in the hour. (Think and reckon the number of the missiles as the travel of one missile: give the examination to the interval, not to the multitude of those sent.) Therefore one missile — for let the many be measured as one by the rush of the interval — went through six thousand plethra from the beginning of the hour to its ending, which make a thousand stades. The intervals of the night and the day, cycled into twenty-four hours, set as twenty-four thousand. Let a thousand be added upon these, given to the leisure of each preparation, so that even the beginning of the delay not be without number. Still there is always inequality in the hours of day and night, and much of it. If then someone, having watched an equinoctial hour, should make the trial of the throw according to it, it will happen for him that they become twenty-five thousand stades.