390 TIME-KEEPING IN CxREECE AND EOME. 



gan to be accurately observed some years after the publication of the 

 law of the twelv^e tables. The accensus watched ibr tlie luoinent when, 

 from the Senate House, he first caught sight of the suu betweeu the 

 Eostra and the GrjBco- Stasis, when he proclaimed publicly the hour of 

 noon. From the same point he watched the declining sun and pro- 

 claimed its disappearance. 



Authorities diflter as to the date of the introduction of the sun-dial 

 into Rome. Pliny attributes it to the consul L. Papirius Cursor, who 

 set it up at the temple of Quirinus. Tliis has been supposed to be a 

 trophy from the Samnite war, but, as the Samuites were a ruder people 

 even than the Romans, that seems scarcely credible. Varro, as reported 

 by Pliny, gives a clearer story, that the first public sundial erected in 

 Rome was fixed upon a column near the Rostra in the time of the first 

 Punic war by the Consul Valerius Messala, and adds that it was brought 

 from the capture of Catina. The date given by Varro, 491 A. u. c, 

 corresponds to 262 B. c, and is about thirty years later than that 

 ascribed by Pliny to the dial of Cursor. As a source for this instru- 

 ment, Sicily with her Greek arts and refinements, is much more prob- 

 able than the rude Samnite people, and with real appreciation of Pliny's 

 frankness, we may accejit the story he quotes from Varro in preference 

 to his own. 



What were the social conditions in Rome at this period, the middle 

 of the third century before our era ? It needs scarcely more than a 

 glance at a chronological table to see that it was a period of swift ad- 

 vance from the primitive rudeness that has been described. In the 

 year 283 B. c. Etruria and her allies, hitherto perpetual foes to Rome, 

 were totally defeated at the Vadimonian Lake, and about 205 b. o. 

 Etruscan independence disappeared forever, simultaneously with the 

 subjugation of all Italy. The whole peninsula her own, Rome reaches 

 out beyond. The Gr;eco-Egyptian monarchy, then at the very height 

 of its power and magnificence under Ptolemy Philadeli)hus, seeks her 

 alliance. The Greek cities across the Adriatic court her favor. She 

 pushes her conquering arms across into Sicily, which, in 241 B. c, be- 

 comes a Roman province, followed a little later by Corsica and Sar- 

 dinia, ^o longer j^rima inter pares among the warring tribes and na- 

 tions of Italy, she has sprung as if at a single bound into her jjosition 

 as one of the great powers of the world. 



The absorption of Magna-Graecia and Sicily brought under her do- 

 minion for the first time a cultured people and populous cities, filled 

 with and habituated to Grecian art and the appliances of refinement 

 and luxury, and the sun-dial of Catina is but one instance of what was 

 borne away to embellish the Imperial City. Doubtless the fame and 

 wealth of the capital offered strong inducements to the skilled artisans 

 of dismantled Tarentum, while the captives of Agrigentum may in 

 their turn have contributed in no small degree to her industrial popu- 

 lation. 



