TIME-KEEPING IN GREECE AND ROME, 391 



The colonists planted by tlionsands far and wide over the conquered 

 territory of Italy formed a sturdy rural population, — a strong reliance 

 in peace aud war. And the great highways built for the march of the 

 legions, and hitherto scarcely resounding but to their armed tread, now 

 became the arteries of a steady and growing traffic. The needs of a 

 circulating medium in her domestic and foreign trade were ill supplied 

 by the copper coins she had struck hitherto, and the products of vari- 

 ous foreign mints tbat had come to her with her other acquisitions ; and 

 in 2.58 B. c, she began to coin silver of her own. Carthagenian jeal- 

 ousy of her aggressive rivalry led to the necessity of maintaining a 

 fleet, and (after some disasters) to maritime supremacy. 



"The ten years preceding the first Punic war," says Dr. Thomas Ar- 

 noldj " wereprobably a time of the greatest physical prosperity which the 

 mass of the Roman peoi)le had ever seen," and it is in tliis very decade, 

 with enlarging industries, with a growing commerce, with multiplying 

 complications in public and private business, that Home stepped from 

 the spring time of her history into her vigorous summer, and with this, 

 step timekeeping began. 



The Catanian suu-dial was no mere gnomon such as had been intro- 

 duced into Greece three centuries earlier. Greek science and genius had 

 been at work on it, and it was an improved instrument, constructed for 

 a particular latitude, and that 5° south of Rome. But there was no 

 science yet in Rome to detect its imperfections, and, in spite of them, 

 for ninety-nine years it served as the regulator of time for the city. 

 Scarcely credible as it may seem, it was not therefore till about a cen- 

 tury and a half before the Christian era that Rome possessed her first 

 accurate time-keeper in the form of a sun-dial constructed especially 

 for her own latitude, which was set up at the instance of the Censor 

 Marcius Phillippus. Meanwhile dials of imperfect construction had 

 become common in the city ; so common indeed, that as new inven- 

 tions nowadays atford material for the American paragrapher, they be- 

 came the happy source of quips and epigrams. Thus Plautus, in what I 

 admit is rather a liberal version : 



When I was yonug, uo time-piece Rome supplied, 

 But every fellow had bis owu — iuside ; 

 A trusty horolofre, that— rain or shine — 

 Ne'er failed to warn him of the hour — to dine. 

 7'/(ett sturdy Romans sauntered through the Forum, 

 Fat, hale, eoutc.iit ; for trouble ne'er eanui o'er them. 

 But itow these cursed dials show their faces 

 All over Rome, in streets and public places ; 

 And men, to know the hour, the cold stone ((uestion, 

 That has no heart, no stomach, no digestion. 

 They watch the creeping shadows — daily thinner — 

 Shadows themselves, impatient for their dinner. 

 Give me the good old time-piece, if you ])l(^ase, 

 Confound the villain that invented these! 



