Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/236

216 Attic minæ, or rather the Roman pound was assumed as equal to one and a half of the Sicilian litræ, or half-minæ (P. 210). But the most singular aud variegated aspect is presented by the Roman measures of capacity as regards both their names and their proportions. Their names have come from the Greek terms either by corruption (amphora, modius is after 🇬🇷, congius from 🇬🇷, hemina, cyathus) or by translation (acetabulum from 🇬🇷); while conversely 🇬🇷 is a corruption of sextarius. All the measures are not identical, but those in most common use are so; among liquid measures the congius or chus, the sextarius, and the cyathus, the two last also for dry goods; the Roman amphora was equivalent in liquid measure to the Attic talent, and at the same time stood to the Greek metretes in the fixed ratio of 3 : 2, and to the Greek medimnus of 2 : 1. To one who can decipher the significance of such records, these names and numerical proportions fully reveal the activity and importance of the intercourse between the Sicilians and the Latins.

The Greek numeral signs were not adopted; but the Roman probably availed himself of the Greek alphabet, when it reached him, to form ciphers for 50, 100, and 1000 out of the signs for the three aspirated letters which he had no use for. In Etruria the sign for 100 at least appears to have been obtained in a similar way. Afterwards, as usually happens, the systems of notation among the two neighbouring nations became assimilated by the adoption in substance of the Roman system in Etruria.

In like manner the Roman calendar (and probably that of the Italians generally) began with an independent development of its own, but subsequently came under the influence of the Greeks. In the division of time the returns of sunrise and sunset, and of the new and full moon, most directly Italy. arrest the attention of man; and accordingly the day and the month, determined not by cyclic calculation but by direct observation, were long the exclusive measures of time. Down to a late age sunrise and sunset were proclaimed in the Roman market-place by the public crier, and in like manner it may be presumed that once upon a time, at each of the four phases of the moon, the number of days that would elapse from that phase until the next was proclaimed by the priests. The mode of reckoning therefore in Latium (and the like mode, it may be presumed, was in use not merely among the Sabellians, but also among the Etruscans)