Written by Visnja Bojovic, Contributing Writer, Classical Wisdom
Time. It’s an abstract concept, but it frames our life possibly more than anything else. We cannot touch time, we cannot feel it or see it, but we know for sure that, as the years pass, we will have (more) grey hair and a lot more stories to tell as a result of it.
Nowadays when we read articles and blogs about the importance of time, they are mostly related to the significance of time management and living every moment as if it was our last (Memento mori!). Of course, all of this is very important as we should be aware of the preciousness and uniqueness of every moment. However, we should not forget that time is important in a much more practical sense as well.
Imagine spending a day without being able to tell the time. Even just the thought of it gives you a certain amount of discomfort, doesn’t it? We are all completely dependent on a system of time measurement that is precise enough to prevent us from being late for an important meeting, that accurately counts the period between contractions, or that allows us to perfectly boil an egg.
However, we should be reminded that it has not always been like this. There are generations of people that we are indebted to for being able to do all these things without worrying.
Inventing the modern calendar
The greatest contribution to the Roman calendar was made by Julius Caesar. We are all more or less familiar with the term Julian calendar, but what does it mean?
To understand the enormous significance of Caesar’s reform, we should first understand the issues that he was facing. As the early Romans primarily lived off of agriculture, the nature of the Roman calendar was agricultural as well. This meant that the earliest Roman years had 10 months, because January and February were unproductive months, and therefore considered nonexistent. This explains the names of the months that have remained in use to this today (e.g. November has the number 9 in its stem, novem because it was originally the 9th month).
January became the first month in 153. B.C., but there was still quite a large gap between the lunar cycle and the solar cycle. By the time of Caesar, the lunar year was months ahead of the solar year in use. The people responsible for the calendar were the pontiffs (priests), so when Caesar became pontifex Maximus in 63. B.C., he employed Sosigenes of Alexandria to help him with this change.
They stretched the year 46 B.C.—now known as the longest year in history—to 445 days long to remove this discrepancy, and introduced the leap year, which meant adding one day in February every four years. However, pontiffs wrongly added this day every three years. Fortunately, the error was corrected by Augustus who discarded this intercalation for 16 years. He rewarded himself with naming the 8th month Augustus and took one day from February to make his month equal to that of July (named after Julius Caesar).
When it comes to days and weeks, they were also initially influenced by agriculture and the Roman lifestyle. The Roman week lasted for eight days because this was the length of the period between the market days, called Nundinae. Under the influence of astrology (it was believed that there were seven planets) and Judaism, the week came to have 7 days somewhere between 19. B.C. and 14. A.D.
What day is it?
Romans had a very peculiar way of expressing dates. The days were numbered concerning three specifically named days, by counting them retrospectively. Those days were: Kalends or Kalendae (1st day of the month), Nones or Nonae (5th or 7th day) and Ides or Idus (13th or 15th day). Therefore, if you wanted to mark May 13th you would have to say: ”two days before the Ides of May!” If it was one day before one of these dates they would use the expression pridie which expressed one day before a certain date.
Clocks and hours
As for the instruments for telling time, they are very difficult to trace but we do know that Roman horologia (clocks) were mostly solaria (Sundials) and clepsydrae, i.e. water clocks. Even though Herodotus writes about the hours as short time units, perceived as such firstly by Egyptians, and later borrowed by the Greeks, there is no account of it in Rome until the arrival of the sundial. The most well-known one is the famous Solarium Augusti on Campus Martius for which an Egyptian obelisk was used.
However, despite this great improvement, Romans had a long way to go to arrive at even a relatively accurate division of hours. It is believed that the first sundial to offer a more or less precise account was set up in 146. B.C. The advent of the sundial resulted in the division of daytime by twelve hours, but this type of clock still had many disadvantages, which resulted in one hour varying between 45 and 75 minutes. The indication of time was given by numbering hours, e.g. hora prima, hora secunda, etc. As for the night, it was divided into four watches called prima vigilia, secunda vigilia, etc.
Conclusion
Now, this is all very complicated, at least when compared to how easy it is for us to tell time on our smartphones and digital watches.
Yet, if I have managed to give you a glimpse of how complicated it was for our ancestors to come up with an accurate system of time measurement, I hope it leads to a greater appreciation for the comfort and convenience we now enjoy due to the hard work of ancient peoples thousands of years removed from us.
4 comments
Time has evolved into a standard that by which almost everything else is measured.
It is actually amazing how important the concept of time really is if one takes into account that it time is important in everyday life where one ‘has to be on time’, where one ‘must meet various deadlines’ etcetera; and, where that same concept is all-important in science and engineering where time is part of all sorts of concepts such as gravity, velocity etcetera…
Time—
It’s not standing still! It runs, goes forward and it’ll never turn back!
Time drives everything on!
It never sleeps!
Time can only run because it has restless feet!
Time—
It’s following its own ways, its own head, and everyone, everything just follows. There’s no choice in the matter!
Time—
It’s in the fibres of everything and everyone…
It’s the boss, the king, of everyone and everything!
It’ll go on forever, running its endless course pulling everything, everyone along for some part of the way.
But it, and it alone, will run this never-ending course, running all of the way!
Only it knows [this] way in full and where it all will end for [our] Universe; but, for Time it’ll only be a death, a rebirth and the new beginning of another course, another way, another Universe and another life…
Time—
…
PJ
Rise again, oh strong one, rise again…
Pour the oil, light the fire, let there be flames!
So that, that what was dead, can live once more…being woken up from the sleep of death—
Burn the fire of life again; let life burn through all the veins and arteries; feel the energy!
Let energy be converted into heat; and, rise from the ashes like the phoenix, rise from the ashes of cremation… and evolve into something else, something new — be strong once again! Evolve into something better than before!
Life and death are just a cycle: neither one is a permanent, neither will last the test of Time; Time is the master of all…
Time is the master of all; it’s in the fibres of everything, and everyone, and it will watch the last atom, a hydrogen, one day decays into simpler matter…
Time exists forever, and ever…and it, or he/she, just borrows little parts of itself to everyone and everything in the Universe…but it itself is permanent ; Time is an immortal being…
This cycle is unstoppable, but slow, and will take billions of years: this cycle of decay…
Time will witness the death of the last true chemical element and the death of anything else after that, only for it to start a new race and a new Universal cycle… at some point in Time, or the other… Everything just follows the ways of Time, running after it until the end…
Another cycle of evolution and devolution…after everything, ‘today’, has done its time will end and Time will come to take back what’s his in anyway: that little piece of time that was borrowed to our Universe… Time will outlast both biological death and life, by far! However, [that] time is not now. It’s still billions of years away…
We’re living in the time where chemical elements are still being recycled…where they all, still have to decay… But Time just waits, not affected…
We are still living in the time where stars are evolving to become men, and everything else, and are still continually doing so — by spewing their guts and dust into the Universe by dying in sometimes immense novae explosions…at the ends of their life times… We’re consisting out of their dust—
We are their children…
We’re are just them reborn in another form: we and everything else…and Time is still allowing us time to develop, evolve and grow…
Pieter J (PJ)
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