Mark 6:40

in ranks Literally, they reclined in parterres (areolatim). "As they sat in these orderly groups upon the grass, the gay red and blue and yellow colours of the clothing, which the poorest Orientals wear, called up in the imagination of St Peter a multitude of flowerbeds in some well-cultivated garden." Farrar's Life of Christ, p. 402. "Our English - in ranks" does not reproduce the picture to the eye, giving rather the notion of continuous lines. Wyclif was better, -by parties;" perhaps in groupswould be as near as we could get to it in English." Trench, Miracles, p. 265. St Mark here, as elsewhere, doubtless reproduces the description of the scene by St Peter.

by hundreds, and by fifties "Two long rows of 100, a shorter one of 50 persons. The fourth side remained, after the manner of the tables of the ancients, empty and open." Gerlach.