That the true position of sexta hora, when implying duration, was in the afternoon, has long been a conviction of mine; and I have elsewhere produced undeniable evidence that it was so
considered by ancient authors. But this passage from Varro is a new and hitherto unnoticed proof, and certainly it ought to be a most convincing one, because it seems impossible to give Varro's words a rational meaning without the admission of this hypothesis, while with it everything is clear and consistent.
The commentators, driven by the necessity I have just pointed out, either to admit the afternoon position of sexta hora, or to abstain from reading it as a space of time, have attempted to force a meaning by reading sexta hora in its other sense, an absolute mathematical point, the punctus ipse of noon.
In so doing they have not scrupled to libel Varro's common sense; they represent his idea of the absurd to consist in the embarrassment that would be caused by the birth occurring at the critical moment of change,—split as it were upon the knife-edge of noon; so that, in the doubt that would arise as to which day it should belong, it must be attributed partly to both!
This interpretation is so monstrous, and so evidently wide of the meaning of the words, that its serious imputation would scarcely be believed, if it were not embalmed in the Delphin edition of Aulus Gellius, where we read the following footnote referring to the argumentum ad absurdum of Varro:
"Infirmum omnino argumentum, et quod perinde potest in ipsum Varronem retorqueri. Quid enim? Si quis apud Romanos Calendis hora vi. noctis fuerit natus, nonne pariter dies ejus natalis videri debebit, et partim Calendarum, et partim ejus dici qui sequetur?"
It is not worth while to inquire what may have been the precise dilemma contemplated by the writer of this note, since most certainly it is not a reflex of Varro's meaning. The word dimidiatus is completely cushioned, although Gellius himself has a chapter upon it a little farther on in the same volume.
The anomaly that amused Varro was the necessity of piecing together two halves not belonging to the same individual day and with the hiatus of a night between them; a necessity that would assuredly appear most absurd to one who had no other idea of birthday than the twelve consecutive hours of artificial day, which he would call "the natural day."
This proneness of the Romans to look upon the dies solis as the only effective part of the twenty-four hours, is again apparent in their commencement of horary notation at sunrise, six hours later than the actual commencement of the day. And in our own anomalous repetition of twice twelve, we may still trace the remains of the twelve-hour day; we have changed the initial point, but we have retained the measure of duration.
It is, however, certain that the two methods of reckoning time continued for a long time to exist contemporaneously. Hence it became necessary to distinguish one from the other by name, and thus the notation from midnight gave rise, as I have remarked in one of my papers on Chaucer, to the English idiomatic phrase "of the clock;" or the reckoning of the clock, commencing at midnight, as distinguished from Roman equinoctial hours, commencing at six o'clock A.M. This was what Ben Jonson was meaning by attainment of majority at six o'clock, and not, as Professor De Morgan supposes, "probably a certain sunrise." Actual sunrise had certainly nothing to do with the technical commencement of the day in Ben Jonson's time. For convenience sake, six o'clock had long been taken as conventional sunrise all the year round; and even amongst the Romans themselves, equinoctial hours were frequently used at all seasons. Actual sunrise, in after times, had only to do with "hours inequall," which are said to have fallen into disuse, in common life, so early as the fifth or sixth century.