Frank King scripsit:
Equal hours were not, though, used for governing
ordinary life.
---------------------
This is not quite right. Equal hours were not used from common people in their
ordinary life, but used for civil porpouses.
Censorinus and Gellius citing Varro say that in Rome the day was intended in 2
ways: natural and civil. Natural was the common day with 12 hours starting from
sunrise and ending at sunset (other 12 hours for night from sunset to sunrise),
wether the day was long or schort. Civil day was the complete period of day and
night divided in 24 equal hours starting to compute at midnight. This was the
civil roman day. But was used for civic meanings by lawyers and all those
people involved in laws. because, it is written, lawyers must know the exat day
of the birth of a man for marriage or for inheritances etc. people born before
midnight, was born the day before and people born after midnight was born the
day after. This was important to know exactly the age of one, and so
establishing all the rights or duty by law.
Also astronomer used the equal hours for the reason that Gianni sayd, but
surely a lot of time before Ptolemy. It is known for example that the double
hours of Babylon (Beru) were equal hours. Equal hours were measured with wather
clocks.
Mario
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Mario Arnaldi
Via Cavour, 57/c
48100 Ravenna
Italy
Lat. 44° 25' N - Lon. 12° 12' E
Redazione di "GNOMONICA ITALIANA" rivista di storia, arte, cultura e tecniche
degli orologi solari
ID Yahoo Messenger: "mcardal"
ID MSN Messenger: "[EMAIL PROTECTED]
ID Skype: "mcardal"
-----------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------
https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial
