How Many Miles to Babylon? In the 1824 edition of "The Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia" there's a description of the rhyme and the game, giving the distance as "six, seven or a lang eight". The rhyme was originally accompanied by a singing game in which two lines face each other, with one player in the middle. At the end of the rhyme the players have to cross the space and any caught help the original player in the middle catch the others. The game seems to have fallen out of use in the twentieth century. In literature In film In music How Many Miles to Babylon?
Droungarios of the Watch front and another with the emperor on horseback on the rear. The dignity survived until the end of the Byzantine Empire. The historian Sphrantzes equated the Ottoman post of Agha of the Janissaries to the Grand "Droungarios" of the Watch. Droungarios of the Watch The "Droungarios" of the Watch (, "droungarios tēs viglēs/viglas"), sometimes anglicized as "Drungary of the Watch", was originally a senior Byzantine military post. Attested since the late 8th century, the "droungarios" commanded the "Vigla" or "Watch", one of the elite professional cavalry regiments ("tagmata") of the middle Byzantine period, and was in charge of the Byzantine