276 VARRO ON FARMING [bk. 



by night, move round the lower part of the hemi- 

 sphere in such a way as to indicate the hour. In the 

 middle of the same hemisphere, which has a spindle 

 in the centre, is painted the cycle of the eight 

 winds, like the Jiorologium ^ at Athens made by the 

 Cyrrestian, and projecting from the spindle a pointer 

 so moves to the circle as to touch the sign of what- 

 ever wind is blowing at the time, so that any one 

 inside can tell. 

 8 As we were saying this, shouting was heard in 

 the Campus. We who were old hands at electioneer- 

 ing were not surprised, knowing how excited voters 



Luciferi nonien accipity ut sol alter diem maturans: contra ah 

 occasu refulgens nuncupatur Vesper, etc. 



I believe, with Schneider, that here are meant certain images 

 which moved round the lower part of the tholtts where the 

 hours were marked, and that they were actuated by some 

 such clepsydra as that described by Vitruvius (ix, 9) under the 

 name of CtpoXoyiov vSpavXucov — a complicated arrangement of 

 wheels and water. Clepsydrae, which indicated the hour at 

 night, as well as by day, were common in Rome after 159 B.C. 



^ Horologium. This was an octagonal tower made of marble 

 which contained a clepsydra that gave die hour of the day or 

 night. Each of the eight sides of the tower corresponded to 

 the direction from which one of the eight winds blew, and 

 had engraved on the frieze a picture of that wind. At the 

 summit of the sloping roof there was the figure of a Triton 

 holding in his hand a rod with which he pointed to the picture 

 of the wind which was blowing at the time. This tower was 

 built by Andronicus of Cyrrhus about the middle of the first 

 century B.C., and is still to be seen at Athens. There is a 

 good engraving of it in Seyffert's (Sandys and Nettleship) 

 "Dictionary of Classical Antiquities," p. 648, and a careful 

 description of it in Vitruvius, i, 6. 



