Re: measuring time
| From: | Dirk Elzinga <dirk.elzinga@...> |
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| Date: | Saturday, June 18, 2005, 1:12 |
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On 6/17/05, Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:
> On Friday, June 17, 2005, at 03:43 , # 1 wrote:
>
> > Am I wrong if I think that the division in 24 hours is due to the facility
> > to divide that number in 2, 3, 4, 6, and 12
>
> Not entirely. The original division was by 12 only - hours of daylight
> divided by twelve. Night-time was variously divided. The ancient Romans
> for example simply divided darkess (night) into four more or less equal
> watches.
This reminded me of a (for me) very evocative stanza from "Psalm XC"
by Isaac Watts, an English hymnist of the early 18th century:
A thousand ages in thy sight
Are like an evening gone;
Short as the watch that ends the night
Before the rising sun.
It opens the first volume (_The Shadow of the Torturer_) of Gene
Wolfe's _The Book of the New Sun_. It has otherwise no connection to
conlanging or world-building.
As you were.
Dirk
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