05.09.25: Level 1/2 (review); Ora Maritima [13]; Vestīgia Rōmānōrum [1](ii): Part one: telling the time – Roman style

A light-hearted comment: I was born [i] at the seventh hour [ii] one day before the Nones of March [iii] 897 years (give or take a year depending on who’s writing about it) from the Norman Conquest [iv] during the Premiership of Harold McMillan and the Presidency of John F. Kennedy.

Alternatively, I could say “I was born at noon on March 6^th, 1963”

It always amazes me how the Romans managed to organise themselves to do anything. I can imagine an announcement in the Senate: “These events, conscript fathers, took place during the consulship of Caius Sulpicius Longus and Publius Aelius Paetus”, the Senators all looking at each other and whispering “Do you remember when that was? No? Well, just nod and pretend you do.”

Telling the time, giving dates and expressing years in the Roman way is a bit like wading through mud.

More detailed information on the topic of telling the time is posted here:

https://adckl.blogspot.com/2024/04/220324-ordinal-numbers-2-telling-time.html

Several mind-boggling posts will deal with all of this in more detail – later (when I can face it). However, for the purposes of this text, the image shows a comparison of the Roman hours and our times based upon Winter and Summer. Note that these are approximate and simplified versions of research which gives exact modern equivalents in minutes and seconds. You may come across variations. You do not require such precision to express yourself – nor did the Romans – but when you read a time in Classical Latin or you wish to express a time yourself, then the table gives you an indication of what time they’re talking about.

Et patruus meus “Quintā hōrā Marcus et Alexander Dubrīs adventābunt; intrā duās hōrās ad locum proeliī ambulāre poterimus; post ūnam hōram redambulābimus; itaque hōrā decimā vel undecimā domī erimus, ut spērō.”

Given that the story takes place during the school holidays in Summer, we can approximate the translation as follows:

And my uncle said “Mark and Alexander will arrive from Dover at the fifth hour [ = around 10.00am]; we will be able to walk to the battle site within two hours; we will return after an hour; therefore, we will be home at the tenth hour [ = around 4pm] or the eleventh hour [ = around 5pm], I hope.”

What would not be correct is to translate these times as 5am, 10am and 11am since the text refers to having lunch and evening meal.

In later parts of this text:

hōra fere tertia fuit cum in viam nōs dedimus │ It was around the third hour [ = 7am] when we set off

Sed nōs puerī prandium iam postulābāmus: nam hōra iam septima erat. │ But we boys were already  asking for lunch, for it was now the seventh hour [both Winter and Summer = starting at 12 noon]