STICHOMETRY. - From στήχος (line) is the conventional system used by the Greeks and Latins to calculate the length of written texts, counting the verses in poetic works and the lines, reduced to a unit length of about 16-17 syllables (the average width of the hexameter) in prose works.
This system was applied especially for commercial purposes, to evaluate the work of the scribe for remuneration purposes, as in the case of the *paccia* (v.) in medieval university texts. This explains why the stichometric indications preserved in some manuscripts (especially Greek ones) often do not correspond to the actual number of lines in the roll or codex, but to those of the exemplar from which they derive. A partial stichometric system was also used, consisting in numbering the lines in groups (of 100, 50, etc.), thus facilitating references as in modern citations. The term *stichometry* was also used to denote the division of texts into short periods or propositions, into which texts were sometimes divided to facilitate their reading, especially if public: to this system, however, the name *colometry* better applies, since it is based on division "per cola et commata" (a *comma* would be the member of the period comprising up to 7 syllables, a *colon* that from 8 to 17). Applications of this system are attested in the works of Plato, Demosthenes, Cicero, the *Regula Benedictina*, etc.; but the most famous remains that of the Bible (both in the Greek and Latin Vulgate), already documented before the well-known *ἐκδοσις* of the Acts and the Epistles edited by the deacon Eutalius (4th century).