Roman Leagues to Centimeters (leuga to cm)

1 Roman league equals 222,000 centimeters exactly.

1 Roman league = 222,000 centimeters

How to convert Roman leagues to centimeters

To convert Roman leagues to centimeters, multiply the number of Roman leagues by 222,000. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply centimeters by 0.000004504504505 (rounded).

centimeters = Roman leagues × 222,000

Example: 10 Roman leagues = 2,220,000 centimeters.

Approximate value. Standards for the Roman league varied by place and period, so this converter uses the most commonly cited value. Treat results as estimates, not exact figures.

About these units

Roman League (leuga)

Ancient RomanHistorical unit (no longer in standard use)Approximate value

One and a half Roman miles (7,500 Roman feet), about 2.22 km. Used in Gaul and later across the empire for longer distances.

Gaul, not Rome, gave this unit its name. The Latin leuga or leuca came from a Celtic measure of the Gauls that the Romans adopted, and it is the ancestor of the later European league. It may originally have approximated the distance a person could walk in an hour, though that is a suggestion rather than a documented definition.

In Roman terms it was fixed at one and a half Roman miles, or 7,500 Roman feet, which comes to about 2.22 km. Under Septimius Severus this Gallo-Roman league replaced the mile as the official road distance in the Gallic and Germanic provinces. Even so, its practical length varied by region and period, so 2,220 m is a convention based on the 296 mm foot rather than a measured constant.

Later leagues strayed far from the Roman original. Medieval and later values ran from about 2.2 km up to nearly 8 km, with the English league taken as three miles, the Spanish common league near 5.57 km, and a French metric lieue set at exactly 4 km in 1812. No country officially uses it now, though Jules Verne's famous title keeps the word familiar.

1 Roman league = 2,220 meters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: League (unit); Wikipedia: Roman units of measurement; Wikipedia: Roman mile

Centimeter (cm)

Metric (SI)Current unit

One hundredth of a meter. Used for body measurements, clothing and everyday objects.

Scientists, rather than shopkeepers, gave the centimeter its place. In 1832 Carl Friedrich Gauss proposed a system of absolute units built on length, mass and time, choosing the millimeter, milligram and second. In 1873 a committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, whose members included James Clerk Maxwell and William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), recommended the centimeter, gram and second instead. That CGS system dominated physics for decades, until the metre-kilogram-second system replaced it in the mid-twentieth century and led to SI.

CGS units proved awkward for rooms and buildings, which run to hundreds of centimeters, but the centimeter itself never went away. It is still the everyday unit for height, clothing and small objects, and it appears in map scales and rainfall reports. An adult fingernail is roughly one centimeter wide, and a milliliter is defined as exactly one cubic centimeter. An inch is exactly 2.54 centimeters. The CGS system itself survives mainly in theoretical physics and astrophysics, where Gaussian units are still common.

1 centimeter = 0.01 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Centimetre-gram-second system of units; Wikipedia: Centimetre; NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors

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