542 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 214. 



But tbere is another way of reconciling the dis- 

 crepancy — Hopton may not have intended the 

 words "holding till sun-setting" to apply to the 

 Babylonians, but only to "the lawyers in England," 

 whose day, he says, commenced at the same time as 

 the Babylonian day. The transposition of the words 

 in question to the end of the sentence would give 

 such a meaning, viz. " The Babylonians begin 

 their day at sun-rising, and so do our lawyers 

 count it in England, holding till sun-setting." 

 Altered in this way, the latter clause does not 

 necessarily apply to the Babylonians. 



Here again we have a lawyers' day almost ver- 

 bally identical with one assigned to them by Sir 

 Edward Coke : " Dies artificialis sive Solaris incipit 

 in ortu soils et desinit in occasu, and of this the 

 law of England takes hold in many cases." 



iSTor does Lord Coke strengthen or vary his de- 

 scription in the least, when speaking of the day 

 commencing at midnight ; he uses again the same 

 expression with regard to it, " The Egyptians 

 and Romans from midnight, and so doth the law 

 of England in many cases" 



Hence the authority of Chief Justice Coke, is 

 at best only neutral ; for who will undertake to 

 prove to which of these classes of " many cases " 

 Lord Coke meant to assign the attainment of ma- 

 jority ? 



In support of Ben Jonson's testimony, it may be 

 urged that the midnight initial of the day was 

 itself derived by us from the Romans ; and it is 

 nearly certain that they did not perform any legal 

 act, connected with birthday, until the commence- 

 ment of the dies solis. 



A proof of this may be observed in the discussion 

 by Aulus Gellius {Noct. Attic..,\\\.2.) as to which 

 day, tl'.e preceding or the following, a person's 

 birth, happening in the night, was to be attributed. 

 He quotes a fragment from VaiTo, — 



" HomiiK-s qui ex media noctead proximam mediam 

 noctem his horis xxiv nati sunt, uno die nati di- 

 cuntur." 



On which Gellius remarks : 



" From these words it may be observed that the ar- 

 rangement of (birth) days was such, tliat to any person 

 born after suiiset, and before midnight, the day from 

 which that night had proceeded should be the birth- 

 day ; but to any person born during the last six hours 

 of tl^e night, the day which should succeed that night 

 must be the birthday." 



This explanation might seem almost purposely 

 written in reply to some such difficulty as occurred 

 to Phofessor De Morgan (ante, p. 250.), when 

 he remarks that, if birthday were to be confined to 

 daylight, " a child not born by daylight would 

 have no birthday at all ! " But since it was no- 

 torious amongst the Romans that the civil day 

 began at midnight, such a quceri soUtuin as this 

 could never have been mooted, if the birthday ob- 



servance had not been known and acknowledged 

 to have a different commencement. In continua- 

 tion of the same subject, Gellius proceeds to quote 

 another passage from Varro, which I shall also 

 repeat, not only as furnishing still farther proof 

 that the Romans did not regard the night as 

 forming any part of the birthday, but also as 

 affording an opportunity of recording an opinion 

 as to the interpretation of Varro's words, which, 

 in this passage, do not appear to have ever been 

 properly understood. 



After stating that many persons in Umbria 

 reckon from noon to noon as one and the same day, 

 Varro remarks : 



" Quod quidem nimis absurdum est ; nam qui ca- 

 lendarum hora sexta natus est apud Umbros, dies ejus 

 natalis videri debebit et calendarum dimidiatus, et 

 qui est post calendas dies ante horam ejusdem diei 

 sextam." 



Now why should beginning one's birthday at 

 noon appear so absurd to Varro ? Simply because 

 the hours of the night were not then supposed to 

 be included in the birthday at all, and therefore 

 Varro could not realize the idea of a birthday con- 

 tinued through the night. 



He says that, according to the Umbrian reckon- 

 ing, a person born on any day after the point of 

 noon, would have only half a birthday on that 

 day ; and for the other half, he would have to 

 take the forenoon of the following day. Varro 

 had no notion of joining the afternoon of one day 

 to the forenoon of another, because he looked 

 upon the unbroken presence of the sun as the very 

 essence of a natal day. 



Nothing can be plainer than that this was the 

 true nature of the absurdity alluded to ; but it 

 would not suit the prejudices of the commentators, 

 because it would compel them to admit that sexta 

 hora must have been in the afternoon, in opposition 

 to their favourite dogma that it was always in the 

 forenoon. 



For if Varro had intended to represent sexta 

 hora in the forenoon, he would have said that the 

 other half-day must be taken from the afternoon. 

 of the pridie, instead of saying, as he does say, 

 that it must be taken from the forenoon of the 

 postridie of the Calends. 



Consequently, Varro means by " qui Calenda- 

 rum hora sexta natus est," a person born in the 

 sixth hour of the day of the Calends ; the sixth 

 hour being that which immediately succeeded 

 noon — the media hora of Ovid. But what Varro 

 more immediately means by it is, not any parti- 

 cular point of time, but generally any time after 

 noon on the day of the Calends. 



That the true position of sexta hora, when im- 

 plying duration, was in the afternoon, has long 

 been a conviction of mine ; and I have elsewhere 

 produced luuleniable evidence that it was so con- 



