[ 
I 
Chap. 78.] THE PIEST DIAL. 109 
consists of twelve sequinoctial liours and eight parts of an 
hour\ at Alexandria of fourteen hours, in Italy of fifteen, in 
Britain of seventeen ; where the degree of light, which exists 
in the night, very clearly proves, what the reason of the thing 
also obliges us to believe, that, during the solstitial period, 
as the sun approaches to the pole of the world, and his orbit 
is contracted, the parts of the earth that lie below him have 
a day of six months long, and a night of equal length when 
he is removed to the south pole. Pytheas, of Marseilles^, 
informs us, that this is the case in the island of Thule^, which 
is six days' sail from the north of Britain. Some persons 
also affirm that this is the case in Mona, which is about 200 
miles from Camelodunum^, a town of Britain. 
CHAP. 78. (76.) — OP THE EIEST DIAL. 
Anaximenes the Milesian, the disciple of Anaximander, 
of whom I have spoken above^, discovered the theory of 
shadows and what is called the art of dialling, and he was 
the first who exhibited at Lacedsemon the dial which they 
call sciothericon^. 
^ "Hora duodecim in partes, ut as in totidem uncias dividebatur. 
Octonas igitur partes horse antiquse, sive bessem, ut Martianus vocat, 
nobis probe reprsesentant horarum nostratium 40 sexagesimse, quas mi- 
niitas vocamus." Alexandre in Lemaire, i. 396. 
2 For a notice of Pytheas see Lemaire, i. 210. He was a geographer 
and historian who hved in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus ; but his 
veracity does not appear to have been highly estimated by his contem- 
poraries. 
3 The Thule of Phny has been generally supposed to be the Shetland 
Isles. What is here asserted respecting the length of the day, as well as 
its distance from Britain, would indeed apply much more correctly to 
Iceland than to Shetland ; but we have no evidence that Iceland was 
known to the ancients. Our author refers to the length of the day in 
Thule in two subsequent parts of his work, iv. 30 and vi. 36. 
^ Supposed to be Colchester in Essex ; while the Mona of Phny appears 
to have been Anglesea. It is not easy to conceive why the author 
measured the distance of Mona from Camelodunum. 
^ Chap. 6 of this book. 
^ a (TKid, umbra, and Orjpdcj, sector. It has been a subject for discussion 
by the commentators, how far this instrument of Anaximenes is entitled 
to the appellation of a dial, whether it was intended to mark the hours, 
or to serve for some other astronomical purpose. See Hardouin in 
Lemaire, i. 398, 399. It has been correctly remarked by Brotier, that 
we have an account of a much more ancient dial in the 2nd book of Kings, 
XX. 9, 11. 
