| Pliny the Elder, Natural History (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Plin. Nat.]. | ||
| <<Plin. Nat. 7.59 | Plin. Nat. 7.60 (Latin) | >>Plin. Nat. 8.1 |
(60.) The third point of universal agreement was the division of time, a subject which afterwards appealed to the reasoning faculties. We have already stated, in the Second Book, [Note] when and by whom this art was first invented in Greece; the same was also introduced at Rome, but at a later period. In the Twelve Tables, the rising and setting of the sun are the only things that are mentioned relative to time. Some years afterwards, the hour of midday was added, the summoner [Note] of the consuls proclaiming it aloud, as soon as, from the senate-house, he caught sight of the sun between the Rostra and the Græcostasis; [Note] he also proclaimed the last hour, when the
sun had gone down from the Mænian column [Note] to the prison. This, however, could only be done in clear weather, but it was continued until the first Punic war. The first sun-dial is said to have been erected among the Romans twelve years before the war with Pyrrhus, by L. Papirius Cursor, [Note] at the temple of Quirinus, [Note] on which occasion he dedicated it in pursuance of a vow which had been made by his father. This is the account given by Fabius Vestalis; but he makes no mention of either the construction of the dial or the artist, nor does he inform us from what place it was brought, or in whose works he found this statement made.
M. Varro [Note] says that the first sun-dial, erected for the use of the public, was fixed upon a column near the Rostra, in the time of the first Punic war, by the consul M. Valerius Messala, and that it was brought from the capture of Catina, in Sicily: this being thirty years after the date assigned to the dial of Papirius, and the year of Rome 491. The lines in this dial did not exactly agree with the hours; [Note] it served, however, as the regulator of the Roman time ninety-nine years, until Q. Marcius Philippus, who was censor with L. Paulus, placed one near it, which was more carefully arranged: an act which was most gratefully acknowledged, as one of the very best of his censorship. The hours, however, still remained a matter of uncertainty, whenever the weather
happened to be cloudy, until the ensuing lustrum; at which time Scipio Nasica, the colleague of Lænas, by means of a clepsydra, was the first to divide the hours of the day and the night into equal parts: and this time-piece he placed under cover and dedicated, in the year of Rome 595; [Note] for so long a period had the Romans remained without any exact division of the day. We will now return to the history of the other animals, and first to that of the terrestrial.
SUMMARY.—Remarkable events, narratives, and observations, seven hundred and forty-seven.
ROMAN AUTHORS QUOTED.—Verrius Flaccus, [Note] Cneius Gellius, [Note] Licinius Mutianus, [Note] Massurius Sabinius, [Note] Agrippina, the wife of Claudius, [Note] M. Cicero, [Note] Asinius Pollio, [Note] M. Varro, [Note] Messala Rufus, [Note] Cornelius Nepos, [Note] Virgil, [Note] Livy, [Note] Cordus, [Note] Melis-
sus, [Note] Sebosus, [Note] Cornelius Celsus, [Note] Maximus Valerius, [Note] Trogus, [Note] Nigidius Figulus, [Note] Pomponius Atticus, [Note] Pedianus Asconius, [Note] Fabianus, [Note] Cato the Censor, [Note] the Register of the Triumphs, [Note]Fabius Vestalis. [Note]
FOREIGN AUTHORS QUOTED.—Herodotus, [Note] Aristeas, [Note] Bæton, [Note] Isigonus, [Note] Crates, [Note] Agatharchides, [Note] Calliphanes, [Note] Aristotle, [Note] Nymphodorus, [Note] Apollonides, [Note] Phylarchus, [Note] Damon, [Note] Megasthenes, [Note] Ctesias, [Note] Tauron, [Note] Eudoxus, [Note] Onesicritus, [Note] Clitarchus, [Note] Duris, [Note] Artemidorus, [Note] Hippocrates [Note] the physician,
Asclepiades [Note] the physician, Hesiod, [Note] Anacreon, [Note] Theopompus, [Note] Hellanicus, [Note] Damastes, [Note] Ephorus, [Note] Epigenes, [Note] Berosus, [Note] Petosiris, [Note] Necepsos, [Note] Alexander Polyhistor, [Note] Xenophon, [Note] Callimachus, [Note] Democritus, [Note] Diyllus [Note] the historian, Strabo, [Note] who wrote against the Euremata of Ephorus, Heraclides Ponticus, [Note] Aclepiades, [Note] who wrote the Tragodoumena, Philostephanus, [Note] Hegesias, [Note] Archima-
chus, [Note] Thucydides, [Note] Mnesigiton, [Note] Xenagoras, [Note] Metrodorus [Note] of Scepsos, Anticlides, [Note] Critodemus. [Note]
| Pliny the Elder, Natural History (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Plin. Nat.]. | ||
| <<Plin. Nat. 7.59 | Plin. Nat. 7.60 (Latin) | >>Plin. Nat. 8.1 |
