388 TIME-KEEPING IN GREECE AND ROME. 



50 gallous of water. Nothing- however seems to be known of the 

 actual length of time indicated by this quantity of water. A passage 

 in Aristotle gives some idea of the form of the clepsydra as commonly 

 used. It Avas a spherical bottle with its minute opening at the bottom 

 and a short neck at the top, into which the water was poured. The 

 running out of the water at the bottom could be stopped by closing this 

 neck. In using the word bottle I do not mean to imply that this 

 clepsydra was of glass. Glass vessels of a suitable size could not be 

 made at that period. 



The familiar association of this device with the courts is shown in 

 many ways. Aristophanes throughout his comedies is in the habit of 

 using the word clepsydra as a synonym for court of justice, and in a 

 humorous passage in The Wasps the impossibility of conducting a trial 

 without it is quite forcibly set forth, by the introduction, to supplj^ its 

 place, of a vessel intended for less refined purposes. In fact, udwp be- 

 came a synonym for time. We find Demosthenes charging his oppo- 

 nent with talking kv ru> i/ioT udartj " in my water ; " and on another occa- 

 sion he shows the value he attached to the time allotted to him by turn- 

 ing to the ofldcer, when interrupted, with a jieremptory (to dk inila^ie r6 

 ot^oj/), " Yow there ! Stop the water ! " 



I shall again have to refer to this" use of the clepsydra when I come 

 to the Koman period of this history, and will not follow it further now ; 

 nor shall I consider its use as a time-keeper, which, if ever general in 

 Greece, was not until a very late period, belonging rather to the Roman 

 chapter also. The story that Plato had a clepsydra which indicated the 

 hours of night is of little moment, although it is frequently taken as in- 

 dicating some kind of a striking apparatus ; but the language of the 

 author who is the only authority for the statement contains no allusion 

 to an audible signal, nor in fact any intelligible allusion except to a 

 larger clepsydra than usual. 



In fact, all the improvements by which this instrument was converted 

 into a time-keeper belong to so late a period of Greek history that it is 

 more convenient to consider them further on. 



Where Greek colonies were founded, and where Greek influence pre- 

 dominated Greek acts and culture flourished also. Under the Ptolemies, 

 Alexandria became a second home of art and science, not inferior to 

 Athens herself. To a greater or less extent the same must have been 

 true of the great cities which dotted the northern coast of the Mediter- 

 ranean, such as Tarentum, Agrigeutum, and Syracuse. With kindred 

 people, similar culture and needs, and with unceasing commercial in- 

 tercourse, there is no reason to doubt that whatever was in common use 

 in the mother cities found its way to them also. It was in Alexandria 

 that in the shape of what is appropriately termed the water-clock the 

 clepsydra attaiiied its highest development, in the inventions of Ctesi- 

 bius, who is placed by some writers in the third century li. c. and by 

 others with wore probability in the second. I reserve these inventious 



