The Changing Role Of Timekeeping In Ancient Rome And Greece

In the postclassical era or medieval period (1 CE to 1500 CE), there were a myriad of advances, methods, depictions and detailed accounts of historical timekeeping devices. This was a time of changing cultures, religions and ideologies, and society as whole had a thirst for knowledge i.e. the Middle East, Europe, India, Japan and China. Acquiring new knowledge and technological advancements, allowed certain empires, during this time, to rise above others. Timekeeping was a unifying factor. Timekeeping was another one of the many contributions made in Ancient Rome and Greece; Ancient Romans and Greeks were innovators, making roads, buildings, and aqueducts. They also adopted and innovated previous technologies, according to Pliny the Elder a
The Greek-Macedonian Empire, was led by Alexander the Great; in 325 BCE, the Greeks invented many technologies, including the Clepsydra, a type of water clock, that worked by allowing water to collect in a vessel or reservoir; they added a floating pointer which would rise, as water accumulated in the device, and incrementally mark the hours. Interestingly, the “clepsydra became a necessary adjunct of all courts of justice, and the number of gallons of water that a lawyer was allowed for his speech gave some indication of the importance of the trial” i.e. Demosthenes, an ancient Greek lawyer, constantly referred to water as time, when arguing in court.7 Water clocks were popular devices to keep time and were also used in China; they also involved regulating the flow of water from one container to another; however, unlike the Greek Clepsydra, the water reached different marking measurements on the container, as it flowed out of the vessel. “For the next fifteen centuries or more after the introduction of this clepsydra of Ctesibius, sundials and clepsydras were the timekeepers of mankind” 8 Following the Tang dynasty in China, the Sung dynasty, in the 11th century, built an astronomical
In 1092 CE, Su Sung, a Chinese astronomer, improved the Water Clock with a mechanical water-wheel bucket escapement; his managed to build, what is cited as, the first astronomical clock. To give some perspective, Giovanni de' Dondi (Italian physician, astronomer and mechanical engineer) and Richard of Wallingford (English astronomer, mathematician and horologist) designed and built similar astronomical clocks, three hundred years later, because the invention was lost due to an invasion and war.8 Five-hundred years later, Jesuit Christian missionaries and Portuguese traders obtained a ticket of entry in China with, what Chinese believed to be a superior technology, the mechanical chiming clock. Any form of timekeeping, including the calendar, was revered by and reserved for the Chinese court, because it contributed to political and economic decisions. Author David Landes, professor of economics and history at Harvard University, gives some historical context; close or continuous time measurement was not a rural concern in China, as many people were farmers and