Institutio Oratoria

and historians have been taken to task by geometricians for believing the time taken to circumnavigate an island to be a sufficient indication of its size. For the space enclosed is in proportion to the perfection of the figure.

Consequently if the bounding line to which we have referred form a circle, the most perfect of all plane figures, it will contain a greater space than if the same length of line took the form of a square, while a square contains a greater space than a triangle having the same total perimeter, and an equilateral triangle than a scalene triangle.