TIME-KEEPING IN GKEECE AND ROME. 383 



au(l a coiuage. They were piolitic in political ideas. I>ut the period 

 just previous to Solon was marked by the tyranny of the oligarchs, the 

 severity of whose legislation gave the term " Draconian " its signiti- 

 cance, by wides[)read poverty, by slavery, by the decline of agriculture 

 and industry, and by the unceasing war of factions. Athens was 

 emerging from snch conditions as these, under the reign of Pisistratus, 

 at the time when the Milesian philosopher is said to have introduced 

 the sun-dial. We may conceive that the conditions were not favor- 

 able to the general adoption of any novelty of this character, but it is 

 noticeable that this period was followed immediately by one of dem- 

 ocratic ascendency under the constitution of Oleisthenes, in which the 

 naval power and commercial importance of Athens were vastly aug- 

 mented, and which continued without interruption until his invuicible 

 phalanxes laid all Greece at the feet of Philip of Macedon. 



It was during this era of maritime vigor, of commercial prosperity, 

 and of dominating inliueuce at home and abroad, that Athens achieved 

 that splendor in art which has made her a beacon-light for all subse- 

 ([uent peoples and ages; and in this period, time-keei)ing in common 

 life had its tirst development. But the sun-dial is an instrument of 

 limited capacity ; however perfected, it was valueless in the hours of 

 night and in the days of cloud and storm that even sunny Greece does 

 not always escape. But more than this, it was incapable of in-door 

 use; and in the outgrowth of institutions under democratic order and 

 among a litigious and voluble people a new and singular want had 

 arisen demanding some means of checking time which, from its limita- 

 tions, the sun-dial could not supply. With her other arts, that of ora- 

 tory had developed in Athens ; but every orator was not a Pericles, 

 and whatever may have been the merits or detects of their ])erform- 

 auces the inordinate length of these was too great a tax on the tribu- 

 nals. It therefore became necessary to limit and apportion the time 

 of public speakers in the courts, and to do this equitably some i)ractical 

 means of indicating time was necessary. Hence arose the demand for 

 another instrumentality whose origin and history are now to be traced. 



It is proper to i)ause for a moment here to note a distinction between 

 two kinds of instruments used to measure time. A continuous instru- 

 ment like a clock, which marks off tha hours of the day and night as 

 they pass successively away, is what is called in common language a 

 time-keeper ; but there is a (jlass of instruments which do not keep the 

 record of continuous time, but are used only for the checking of brief 

 periods ; such an instrument is the glass by which the seaman observes 

 Iiis log or the cook boils her eggs. To such instruments, for the want 

 of a better term, 1 give the name time-checks, to distinguish them from 

 time-keepers. Their use is (}uite distinct from that of observing the 

 time of day, and yet it is apparent at once, that by careful attendance, 

 as by turning the hour-glass at the moment when its last sand has run 

 out, the time-check may be made to perform the office of a time- keeper. 



