Page:The Natural History of Pliny.djvu/143

Chap. 78.] THE riRST DIAL. 109 consists of twelve aequinoctial hours and eight parts of an hour at Alexandria of fourteen hours, in Italy of fifteen, in Britain of seventeen ; where the degree of light, ^Yhieh exists in the night, very clearly proves, what the reason of the thing also obliges us to believe, that, during the solstitial period, as the sun approaches to the pole of the world, and his orbit is contracted, the parts of the earth that lie below him have a day of six months long, and a night of equal length when he is removed to the south pole. Pytheas, of Marseilles^, informs us, that this is the case in the island of Thule^, which is six days' sail from the north of Britain. Some persons also affirm that this is the case in Mona, which is about 200 miles from Camelodunum'*, a tovn of Britain. CHAP. 78. (76.) — or the eibst dial. Anaximenes the Milesian, the disciple of Anaximander, of whom I have spoken above^, discovered the theory of shadows and what is called the art of dialling, and he was the first who exhibited at Lacedsemon the dial which they call sciothericon^. ^ " Hora duodecim in partes, ut as in totidem uncias dividebatiu*. Octonas igitur partes horse antiquse, sive bessem, ut Martianus vocat, nobis probe repraesentant horarum nostratium 40 sexagesimse, quas mi- uutas vocamus." Alexandre in Lemaire, i. 396. 2 For a notice of Pytheas see Lemaire, i. 210. He was a geogi'apher and historian who lived in the tune of Ptolemy Philadclphus ; but his veracity does not appear to have been highly estimated by his contem- poraries. 3 The Thiile of Pliny has been generally supposed to be the Shetland Isles. What is here asserted respecting the length of the day, as well as its distance from Britain, would indeed apply much more correctly to Iceland than to Shetland ; but we have no evidence that Iceland was known to the ancients. Our author refers to the length of the day in Thule in two subsequent parts of his work, iv. 30 and vi. 36. ^ Supposed to be Colchester in Essex ; while the Mona of Phny appears to have been Anglesea. It is not easy to conceive why the author measured the distance of Mona from Camelodunum. ° Chap. 6 of this book. ^ a (TKia, umbra, and Gripdut, sector. It has been a subject for discussion by the commentators, how far this instrument of Anaximenes is entitled to the appellation of a dial, whether it was iiitcnded to mark tlie hours, or to serve for some other astronomical puqDOse. See llardoiiin in Lemaire, i. 398, 399. It has been correctly remarked by IJrolier, that we have an account of a much more ancient dial in the 2nd book of Kings, XI. 9, 11.