Gallus

NOTWITHSTANDING the magnificence of the domestic arrangements of the ancients, and the refined care bestowed on every thing that could make life agreeable, they still were without many ordinary conveniences. For instance, a clock, to regulate the business of the day, according to a fixed measure of time, to us an indispensable piece of furniture, which the man of moderate means can command with facility, and even the poorest does not like to be without,—was, for nearly five hundred years, a thing quite unknown in Rome, and even in later times only in a very imperfect state.

Besides this, the division of the day was inconvenient. It is true, they reckoned twenty-four hours from midnight to midnight, but they divided the regular duration of the day, between the rising and setting of the sun, into twelve hours, and allotted the remainder of the time to the night, which was partitioned into four watches. On this account a faulty state of things naturally arose, for the hours of night and day being of variable length throughout the year, and only equal at the equinoxes, their eleventh hours, for instance, began at fifty-eight minutes past two, according to our mode of reckoning, in the winter solstice, and at two minutes past five in the summer solstice. Thus any comparison of the Roman hours with ours, is attended with this difficulty, that we must always know the natural length of the day for the latitude of Rome, in order that our calculation may be correct.