Until recently, I associated sundials with castles and palaces for the rich in the 16th
and 17th centuries and it never occurred to me that they already
existed in antiquity.
Meanwhile, I learned that they were known in Egypt around 1500 BC and after that in Babylon !
My first
encounter with an antique sundial happened when I visited the site of Cnidos
in southwestern Turkey .
Here, I found such a sundial from Hellenistic times still in place. This was a
most thrilling experience. Imagine standing in front of a time-telling mechanism that is more than 2,500 years old! It was missing the gnomon, the metal needle that is
supposed to project its shadow onto the concave dial surface but some creative
visitor had inserted a thin twig instead to reproduce the very principle. This
type of dial is known as spherical or hemicyclium.
After all, it
seems that sundials are not entirely uncommon to the Greeks who saw them as an
object of prestige mainly for public use. They were remarkably precise and very
accurate, particularly those found on the island of Delos .
The Romans seem to have merely copied the Greek models and used them in private
life. They cared more for the philosophical attributes rather than for reading
the time and they used the dial’s inscriptions and iconography as symbols.
These days, an
intact and inscribed sundial has been discovered at the edge of the theater in Interamna
Lirenas, near Monte Cassino,
in Italy .
This was not its original place as researchers believe that it was left behind by
people who looted the area in search of building materials.
The lettering and
the style of the inscription indicate that the sundial dates from the mid-first
century BC or later, in any case at a time when the city of Interamna had acquired Roman
citizenship.
The Latin text tells us that the piece was
commissioned by a certain M(arcus) NOVIUS M(arci) F(ilius)
TUBULA [Marcus Novius Tubula, son of Marcus], who held the office of TR(ibunus)
PL(ebis) [Plebeian Tribune] and paid for the sundial D(e) S(ua) PEC(unia) (with
his own money). The otherwise unknown Marcus
Novius Tubula may have used the sundial to celebrate his election as a
Plebeian Tribune of Rome .
The Interamna
sundial very closely resembles the Hellenistic one from Cnidos, which confirms
that the Romans did not add much if anything to the existing Greek examples.
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