Arura
ἄρουρα
Arura (ἄρουρα), a Greek measure of surface, which would appear, from its name, to have been originally the chief land-measure.
Herodotus (2.163) mentions a measure of the same name, which is almost certainly identical. He says that it is a hundred Egyptian cubits in every direction. Now the Egyptian cubit contained nearly 17 3/4 inches (Hussey, Ancient Weights, &c. p. 237); therefore the square of 100 x 17 3/4 inches, i. e. nearly 148 feet, gives approximately the number of square feet (English) in the arura, viz. 21,904. (Wurm, de Pond. &c. p. 94.) The different estimate of Suidas, making it the fourth part of the πλέθρον or 2500 square Greek feet, is erroneous (Hultsch, Metrol. p. 38, n. 4; p. 284).
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.