Rome had no method of reckoning time other than by sunrise, noon and sunset

Rome, alone among the ancient nations, had no method of reckoning time other than by sunrise, noon and sunset, until the fifth century after the Foundation of the City. Then, as the influence of Greece began to be felt among the more cultured Roman society, a sundial was imported from their Grecian neighbors in Sicily, and erected on a column behind the Rostra. Undoubtedly the Romans felt very proud of their borrowed knowledge but it took them ninety-nine years to discover that since the sundial had been made for a different latitude, it failed to keep time in Rome. When, and only when, this important fact was recognized, did Q. Marcius Philippus erect a new sundial, made for the place where it was intended to be used. For astronomical purposes indigenous art is absolutely necessary.

There is one thing, however, to be said for the Romans. Once they had acquired a bit of practical knowledge they certainly used it to the greatest possible extent. By 200 B. C. Plautus was complaining bitterly:

"The gods confound the man who first found out How to distinguish hours! Confound him, too, Who in this place set up a sun-dial, To cut and hack my days so wretchedly Into small portions. When I was a boy My belly was my sun-dial; one more sure, Truer and more exact than any of them. This dial told me when 'twas proper time To go to dinner, when I had aught to eat. But now-a-days why, even when I have, I can't fall to, unless the sun gives leave. The town's so full of these confounded dials, The greatest part of its inhabitants Shrunk up with hunger, creep along the streets."

Only a little later, in Athens, a building was erected which still bears witness to the astronomical pursuits of the men who placed it there. It stands in the Roman forum, a small octagonal tower on the top of which once pivoted the little figure of a triton who is the great-great-ancestor of all the weather vanes in the world.

From this figure, and from the symbolic figures sculptured in relief about the sides, it has come to be known as the "Tower of Winds," though properly it was a horologium, a device for measuring hours. Within the structure was a water clock, supplied from a fountain in the turret, and outside, beneath the sculpture, was carved an intricate system of lines, so computed that the shadow cast on them by the stylus or gnomon gave the hour of the day. In the midst of the poor imitations that Roman influence built within the city of Athens, and the desecration which they wrought on the greatest monuments of antiquity, the little Tower of Winds stands alone as a monument not only to the man who built it, but to the people who wanted it placed in the forum to serve as focal point for their daily lives.

After the invention of the inclined gnomon sundial, all other kinds disappeared with great rapidity. A pocket sundial became as necessary, even among the common people, as the cheap pocket watch is today.

"A fool, a fool, I met a fool in the forest," exclaimed the melancholy Jaques after a stroll in the forest of Arden; and he described the fellow with some surprise:

"And then he drew a dial from his poke, And, looking at it with lack-lustre eye, Says very wisely,It is ten o'clock."

The sight of a motley fool taking solar observations so far from civilization may well have astonished Jaques; but the incident serves to show us how commonly pocket sundials were employed, even in Elizabethan times.

A stationary sundial, once set, requires no further adjustments. It may be read with a minimum of trouble. But when solar instruments began to be used as traveling clocks, their owners suffered from a number of inconveniences. To begin with, they must be adjusted for the various latitudes of the Earth's surface, and for this purpose extra dials were made part of the regular equipment. Then the observer must know the direction of true north, or he could not tell time at all. Today we can as easily find time by direct observation on the Sun or a star as we can find north by the same means; but that was not true for the wanderers of Elizabethan times. To remedy this defect, portable sundials were often equipped with magnetic compasses. If Touchstone knew the difference between true and magnetic north, he was probably right when he quoth very wisely that it was ten o'clock.