Roman Paces to Kilometers (passus to km)

1 Roman pace equals 0.00148 kilometers exactly.

1 Roman pace = 0.00148 kilometers

How to convert Roman paces to kilometers

To convert Roman paces to kilometers, multiply the number of Roman paces by 0.00148. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply kilometers by 675.6756757 (rounded).

kilometers = Roman paces × 0.00148

Example: 10 Roman paces = 0.0148 kilometers.

Approximate value. Standards for the Roman pace 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 Pace (passus)

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

Five Roman feet, about 1.48 m. A passus was a full stride, from the lift of one foot to the same foot landing again.

Counting a pace by both feet is the key to the Roman passus. Unlike a single step, it ran from the point where one heel leaves the ground to where that same heel lands again, so it covered two steps, each called a gradus. Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa is credited with fixing it at five Roman feet, which comes to about 1.48 m, the figure used here. The exact size depends on the foot, whose surviving measures vary by a few millimeters.

A thousand paces, mille passus, formed the Roman mile of about 1.48 km, and the English word mile descends from that phrase. Milestones along roads such as the Appian Way marked distances in this unit,. The pace also sat in a chain of units: ten feet made a decempeda, and 120 feet made an actus. In imperial terms the passus is a little under five feet.

1 Roman pace = 1.48 meters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Pace (unit); Wikipedia: Ancient Roman units of measurement

Kilometer (km)

Metric (SI)Current unit

1,000 meters. The standard unit for road distances in most countries.

A name for 1,000 meters took a while to settle. In 1793 France's National Convention made the metre the sole French unit of length, and the first proposed name for the thousand-metre multiple was millaire. Everyday French usage then leaned on the myriametre, 10,000 meters, well into the 1800s. The Netherlands adopted the kilometre in 1817, under the local name mijl, and made it the only official unit of that size in 1867. In 1935 the CIPM dropped the myria- prefix, which left the kilometre as the standard unit for road-scale distances.

Kilo- is the SI prefix for a thousand, and the kilometre is now the preferred unit for land distances in most of the world, with the United States, the United Kingdom and Liberia among those that still use the mile. One kilometre is about 0.621 mile. The main span of Lisbon's 25 de Abril Bridge, at 1.013 km, gives a sense of the scale. Even its pronunciation has been argued over: in 1970 Australia's Metric Conversion Board made stress on the first syllable official, although Prime Minister Gough Whitlam argued for stress on the second. Military slang in several countries calls it a klick.

1 kilometer = 1,000 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Kilometre; Wikipedia: Metric prefix; BIPM: history of the metre

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