It was straight overhead in Syene; in Alexandria it was a little bit less than overhead.

在塞尼镇，太阳就在人们的正上方；在亚历山大，太阳则比正上方偏了一些。

He knew that at the summer solstice, the Sun shone directly down a well in the city of Syene at noon.

他知道，在夏至那天的中午，太阳会直接照射在 Syene 城的一口井里。

He knew the distance between Alexandria and Syene.

他知道亚历山德里亚和塞涅之间的距离。

And Eratosthenes noticed that there was a town called Syene, and on a certain date the sun would actually shine straight down to the bottom of a well.

艾尔托斯蒂尼注意到，在一个叫作塞尼的小镇，太阳光会在特定的日期直射到井的底部。

This head was once part of a complete statue that stood on Rome's most southerly frontier, on the border between modern Egypt and Sudan, probably in the town of Syene near Aswan.

这尊头像来自曾伫立在罗马国境最南端的一座全身像，位于今埃及与苏丹之间，很可能就在阿斯旺附近的沙伊尼镇。

Aristotle also thought that the earth was smaller than the other planets; a claim that was challenged by Eratosthenes, who used the shadows of sundials in Alexandria and Syene to calculate the circumference of the earth.

亚里士多德还认为地球比其他行星小；埃拉托色尼对这一说法提出了质疑，他使用亚历山大和赛伊尼的日冕阴影来计算地球的周长。