Fig. 93.
year, like that of the day, and therefore the length of the night hours is continually decreasing and increasing, a very complicated network of lines was required; four vertical lines denoted the length of the hours at the two solstices and the two equinoxes, so that the exact ratio was given for these days. At other times they had to make shift with a more or less exact calculation, assisted by horizontal curves, which connected together the third, sixth, ninth, and twelfth hours (Compare the scheme represented in Fig. [93], which shows the network of lines engraved on the glass vessel.) The longest and shortest days are here set down according to the latitude of Athens, the former as 14 hours, 36 minutes, 56 seconds, the latter as 9 hours, 14 minutes, 16 seconds. The improvement of Ctesibius consisted in adding a table with horizontal hour-lines to the water-vessel, on which a metal wire, fastened to a cork that swam on the water, marked the time by its position, which rose according to the increase of the water. These clocks could, of course, be used in the daytime, when the weather made the sun-dial useless, but a different scale was required from that of the night clocks. Still, as the difference between the longest night and the longest day, and the shortest night and the shortest day, is very slight, the same scale could really be used for day and night, but in reverse order as indicated by Fig. [93].
Fig. 94.
Let us now consider the manner in which an Athenian citizen usually divided his time. We cannot, of course, name any definite hour for rising, still it seems probable that early rising was the rule at Athens, and that not only the artisans began their work directly after sunrise, but that the schools, too, often opened early. The morning toilet does not seem to have occupied much time. In washing, a slave poured water over his master from an ewer over a basin, and some substitute for soap, such as fuller’s earth or lye, was used; men who lived very simple lives, like Socrates, probably performed their ablutions at one of the public wells. Breakfast was a scanty meal, and generally consisted of unmixed wine and bread. After that, artisans or others who had a definite trade went to their daily occupations; but the citizens who had no regular profession, unless attracted by some other occupation, such as hunting, generally spent the morning hours visiting their friends, practising gymnastics, or, supposing they put off these occupations to a later hour, visiting the barber to have their hair arranged or their beards cut or shaved. As we have already discussed the question of hair-dressing (p. 65), we will here only give a picture of some ancient bronze razors (Fig. [94]), which are of semi-circular shape, and differ essentially from our modern ones. The pretty terra-cotta group
