Convert Roman Actus (actus) to League (lea) instantly.
About these units
Roman Actus (actus)
The Roman actus was an ancient Roman unit of length measuring 120 Roman feet, or about 35.5 meters. It played an essential role in Roman land surveying and agriculture, forming part of the system used to organize farms, roads, and territorial divisions in the expanding Roman world. The actus helped define a square unit of land known as the actus quadratus, which was used for taxation, distribution of land to soldiers, and standardizing plots throughout Roman colonies. Surveyors relied on tools like the groma to lay out straight lines based on actus subdivisions, giving Roman lands their characteristic grid patterns. Although long obsolete, the actus provides key insights into Roman engineering, colonial administration, and agricultural policy. Many European land patterns can trace their roots back to Roman measurement practices — a testament to the enduring legacy of Roman surveying.
League (lea)
The league is an old unit of distance whose length varied widely across cultures, usually somewhere between 2.4 and 5.5 kilometers. Historically, it represented the distance a person could walk in an hour. Maritime and overland leagues existed, further complicating the unit's consistency across regions. In literature—particularly in adventure writing such as Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas—the league became a poetic and evocative measure of great distances. Even when not scientifically precise, its cultural and narrative resonance helped cement its place in storytelling. Though obsolete in modern measurement, the league remains an evocative relic of pre-industrial travel, when human endurance served as a baseline for measurement.