380 TIME-KEEPING IN GREECE AND ROME. 



There are three primitive forms of time-keepiug instruments — tbe sun- 

 dial, the clepsydra or water clock, and the graduated candle. The last 

 plays no part in the evolution of the modern time-keeper, and I shall 

 pass it by without further notice, notwithstanding some interesting his- 

 torical associations connected with it. But the sun-dial was at the be- 

 ginning the only time-keeper, and man's ideas, developing into wants, 

 led to its greater perfection till these wants passed far beyond what, 

 with its limitations, it could supply. Its contribution to the present 

 state of the art was not large, mechanically considered, but it was enough 

 to create the demand for something better, and without this contribu- 

 tion the art could not have been. The rude utensil which the Greeks 

 called a clepsydra had no resemblance to .the jierfected time-jnece of 

 this century, but nothing in history is surer than that out of it, by slow 

 accretions, science and art, by turns mistress and handmaid, have pro- 

 duced the masterpiece of both. 



This history is, therefore, the history of a human want and of a me- 

 chanical structure developed in response to it. But wants grow, and 

 this has grown ; and in tracing it we do not find it always in the same 

 likeuess. Sometimes the want of the moment is satisfied, and then it 

 appears in a novel and unexpected form, altered in its whole complexion 

 by that which has just a[)peased it. And as we recognize this Protean 

 character, we need not suppose that the Babylonian astrologer who 

 made some improvement in a sun-dial had a single idea or purpose in 

 common with those of a railway manager who last week connected his 

 regulator by wire with the Observatory. We trace our want in the de- 

 velopment of institutions, in the creation of new demands upon time, in 

 the growing complexity of human relations, in political crises, and we 

 may determine its character or intensity by the means used to supply it 

 and the generality of their adoption. Tbe story of'tbe growth of the in- 

 strument is inseparable from that of the growth of civilization. 



Writers on the history of the clock (and they are not few) have gen- 

 erally begun by a reference to the sun-dial as a Babylonian or Chaldean 

 invention. We can trace it no further, and have no means of determin- 

 ing when the invention was made. We learn from the Old Testament 

 Scriptures that it was known at Jerusalem as early as seven centuries 

 before our era, and the manner of its mention indicates that in that city 

 it was a novelty. King Ahaz, by whose name this dial is called, had 

 introduced other novelties into his capital on his return from Damascus, 

 whither he had gone to make his submission to Tiglath-Pileser II, King 

 of Assyria ; and it is not unreasonable to suppose that the dial had the 

 same origin. However this may be, it was a graduated instrument, 

 having degree marks of some kind which showed the daily course of 

 the sun. We may infer that it was at least of a Babylonian pattern, 

 and it points to a remote period when a graduated dial indicating the 

 time of day by a shadow passing over it was known to Oriental peoples. 



Presumably it was their invention. The suggestion that they derived 



