the appointment of the twelve tables, the civil or legal day, at Rome, was to end with sunset.

Servius, in a passage which has been quoted among the notes to Dissertation xlii. vol. iii. page 214. observes that crepusculum, crepera or dubia lux, was properly a part of the night; but that usage or the mos loquendi had agreed to refer it to the day *. Will any one say, it is crepera or dubia lux after sunrise? But if the crepusculum necessarily terminated at that point of time or earlier; night as such must also have terminated, and day as such must have begun at or before the same.

Nor need I observe how improbable it must appear a priori, and how repugnant to the natural order of things, that two hours, more or less, of daylight in the morning, at every period in the year should be considered to make a part of the night. This is particularly inconsistent with the habits of the ancients generally over the Roman empire; and especially in the East; where the two first hours of daylight were the most actively employed, and the most stirring part of the day.

If I have not misrepresented the opinion of Dr. Townson, the foundation of his mistake appears to me to be this; that in the many instances of allusions to the hours of the Roman day, which he has carefully collected, he must have understood the reference to the hour, of the hour incipient or current; not final and complete. Now this construction is contrary to the usus loquendi at present; and I think it is equally so to that of former times. It is true, that as soon as the shadow of a gnomon, or the finger of a

clock, is past the point of one hour, the next begins to be current; but no one thinks of saying the time of the day is such and such an hour, until the index is actually upon it.

It is not necessary to examine afresh the passages produced by Dr. Townson. That they may be understood in every instance of the hour current, I admit; but they are not less capable of being understood of the hour complete. And this is the case with that passage from Palladius, De Re Rustica, on which Dr. T. chiefly insists. The shadow of a perpendicular pole, says Palladius, goes on decreasing from the first hour to the sixth, when it is shortest. Now such a pole will begin to cast a shadow, as soon as the sun begins to shine upon it; and the shadow will continue to grow shorter and shorter, from that time until noon. Why then may not Palladius have reckoned the first hour to begin at sunrise, and the sixth to expire at noon?

I have cited elsewhere an epigram copied from the statue of Memnon in Egypt; the purport of which was to record that one Publius Balbinus, a courtier of the empress Sabina, witnessed the phenomenon ascribed to that statue, in the fifteenth year of Hadrian, on the twenty-fourth of the Egyptian Athyr, at a time of the day when

ὥρας δὲ πρώτας ἥλιος ἔσχε δρόμον.

Now the phenomenon in question took place only once in the twenty-four hours; and that at the time of sunrise *. It seems, then, that Publius Balbinus reckoned

*

ἔνθα γεγωνὼς | Μέσ μνων ἀντέλλουσαν ἑὴν ἀσπάζεται 'Hô. Dionysius Periegetes, 249.

Strabo declares himself to have heard the sound in question, in company with Ælius

Gallus, the governor of Egypt and many others, (which would be about U. C. 729 or 730,) #epi ☎раv πрóτηv also; xvii. 1. §. 46. 599. Cf. Himerius, Oratio xvi. §. 1. p. 680. 682.

b Vide supra, page 108.

the first hour of the day to begin with sunrise, which at the vernal or autumnal equinox would be at six in the morning with us.

APPENDIX.

DISSERTATION XXV.

On the journey of St. Paul from Philippi to Jerusalem, U.C. 809. Vide supra, Dissertation xix. page 156-189.

IT

may not be disagreeable to the reader to see the account of St. Paul's journey from Philippi to Jerusalem, U. C. 809, exhibited in detail; particularly as there have been objections raised that it could not be accomplished within the time supposed; and also because, among those parts of the New Testament, which furnish the data for probable calculations respecting the days of the week, and their coincidences with certain days of the month, this account is as full of information as any.

As the greatest part of the journey was performed by sea, the refutation of the objection above mentioned requires that something should be said in the first place concerning the rate of a ship's progress in a day and a night respectively; or the number of miles which might thus be travelled in twenty-four hours. Both these things are to be taken into account; for St. Paul sailed night and day; and the diurna and nocturna navigatio each had their appropriate measure. Qua de causa, observes Pliny, ad occasum navigantes, quamvis brevissimo die, vincunt spatia nocturnæ navigationis, ut solem ipsum comitantes a.

Now not to fatigue the attention of the reader by the production of a multitude of examples, though a vast number might be collected; let me observe that

H. N. ii. 73.

the ancient geographers, such as Marinus or Ptolemy b, when they employ the rate of a ship's sailing for the measure of distances, commonly put it at one thousand stades to a day and a night. Even the Periplus of Scylax, ancient as that composition has been supposed to be, reckons a night's sail equivalent to a day's, and each at five hundred stadia. But this is too low a computation, especially under favourable circumstances. Pliny tells us that Alexander, in his voyage down the Indus, never sailed less than six hundred stades in a day; and though the statement may possibly be false, yet it proves that he supposed it capable of being true. A day and a night's sail in the summer time, and with a favourable wind, is reckoned by Herodotuse at thirteen hundred stades, or one hundred and sixty-two Roman miles: and such appears to have been the estimate of Strabo alsof. Agatharchides g and Diodorush both take it for granted that a ship, which set out from Rhodes, would arrive at Alexandria in Egypt on the fourth day afterwards; and no passage could be more common than this: yet the distance is never calculated at less than four thousand stadia. St. Paul, in his voyage to Rome, was not more than thirty-six hours in sailing from Rhegium to Puteolii; a distance which cannot be estimated at less than one hundred and fifty Roman miles in twenty-four hours. There is a story in Plinyk respecting the production of a fig in the Roman senate, which had been gathered tertium ante diem Carthagine; on the fourth day before at the latest. The ship which brought this fig had sailed, therefore, at least one hundred and twenty-five Roman miles in twenty-four hours. Nor

d H. N.

b Ptolemæi Geographica, i. 9. c Apud Geographos Minores, i. 30. vi. 21. e iv. 86. f xiii. 1. §. 63. 404. g Apud Geographos Minores, i. 48. h iii. 33 i Acts xxviii. 13. k H. N. xv. 20. Cf. Tertullian, Ad Nationes, ii. 16: Operum v. 196: Plutarch, Cato Major, 27.