Note 024
From Chapter 68 of the Decline & Fall

The Attic talent weighed about sixty minae, or avoirdupois pounds (see Hooper on Ancient Weights, Measures, etc.); but among the modern Greeks, that classic appellation was extended to a weight of one hundred, or one hundred and twenty-five pounds (Ducange, ). Leonardus Chiensis measured the ball or stone of the second cannon:

Lapidem, qui palmis undecim ex meis ambibat in gyro.

Extra note by the Rev. H. H. Milman 1782 (Written), 1845 (Revised) — Von Hammer states that he had himself seen the great cannon of the Dardanelles, in which a tailor who had run away from his creditors, had concealed himself several days. Von Hammer had measured balls twelve spans round.