Roman Stadia to Centimeters (stadium to cm)

1 Roman stadium equals 18,500 centimeters exactly.

1 Roman stadium = 18,500 centimeters

How to convert Roman stadia to centimeters

To convert Roman stadia to centimeters, multiply the number of Roman stadia by 18,500. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply centimeters by 0.00005405405405 (rounded).

centimeters = Roman stadia × 18,500

Example: 10 Roman stadia = 185,000 centimeters.

Approximate value. Standards for the Roman stadium 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 Stadium (stadium)

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

125 paces or 625 Roman feet, about 185 m. One eighth of a Roman mile.

Borrowed from the Greek stadion, the Latin stadium named a racecourse length that Romans also used as a route unit. It was defined as 125 paces, or 625 Roman feet, and eight of them made one Roman mile. That puts it at about 185 m, the figure used here, and it is the ancestor of the medieval furlong, itself an eighth of a mile.

The Greek original is far less settled. By Herodotus a stadion was 600 Greek feet, but the foot varied across the Greek world, so historians propose anything from roughly 150 m to 210 m. Itinerary, Olympic, Attic and Persian versions have each been argued for, with figures near 157 m, 192 m, 185 m and 196 m respectively. The Roman value lines up with the Attic estimate rather than the others.

Because the Roman unit is defined through a foot of about 296 mm, any change to that foot changes the stadium too. Surveyors and geographers used the unit for road distances and for scaling the world, and today it survives mostly in the word stadium for a sports venue.

1 Roman stadium = 185 meters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Roman units of measurement; Wikipedia: Stadion (unit); 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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