A	»	B	»	C	»	D	»	E
F	»	G	»	H	»	I	»	J
K	»	L	»	M	»	N	»	O
P	»		R	»	S	»		T
U	»		V	»	W	»		Z

Gilbert Parker - "Cumner & South Sea Folk, Complete"

Burton E. Stevenson - "Affairs of State"

Richard Harding Davis - "Van Bibber and Others"

George MacDonald - "The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark"

Publishers Newswire Announced Today its Latest List of Books to Bookmark, for Q4/2008
REDONDO BEACH, Calif. -- Publishers Newswire, an online resource for small publishers, as well as lesser known and first-time book authors, has announced its latest quarterly 'Books to Bookmark' list, for Q4/2008. This list is a round-up of new and interesting books which are often missed due to not originating from big name authors, or major New York book publishing houses.

Book, 'Letters From Heroes', captures triumphs of the men and women who served in World War I and II
GILROY, Calif. -- The hardships, struggles, hopes and triumphs of the men and women who served in World War I and World War II is wonderfully captured in 'Letters From Heroes' (ISBN: 978-1-58909-570-0), by Edward T. Cook, a new book just published by Bookstand Publishing. This poignant collection of real letters from real servicemen allow the reader to see things through the eyes of these soldiers and understand their thoughts about war, training, sickness, the enemy and even their food.

In New Book, Mystery of the 6,000 Year Old Science and Art of Astrology Has Been Solved
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. -- Author of the new book, ASTROMASKS (ISBN: 978-0-615-23386-4), Vijay Rishii Ph.D., announced today that his book reveals the secret code behind the ancient and controversial science of astrology. The author decodes astrology using a new concept of complementary pairs, and gives new meanings to the zodiac signs and their real connection to humans on earth, which has never been done before in the entire history of astrology.

The History of Rome (Volumes 1 5) - Theodor Mommsen

T >> Theodor Mommsen >> The History of Rome (Volumes 1 5)

28. Quintus Claudius, in a law issued shortly before 534, prohibited
the senators from having sea-going vessels holding more than 300
-amphorae- (1 amph. = nearly 6 gallons): -id satis habitum ad fructus
ex agris vectandos; quaestus omnis patribus indecorus visus- (Liv.
xxi. 63). It was thus an ancient usage, and was still permitted,
that the senators should possess sea-going vessels for the transport
of the produce of their estates: on the other hand, transmarine
mercantile speculation (-quaestus-, traffic, fitting-out of vessels,
&c.) on their part was prohibited. It is a curious fact that the
ancient Greeks as well as the Romans expressed the tonnage of their
sea-going ships constantly in amphorae; the reason evidently being,
that Greece as well as Italy exported wine at a comparatively early
period, and on a larger scale than any other bulky article.




CHAPTER XIV

Measuring and Writing



The art of measuring brings the world into subjection to man;
the art of writing prevents his knowledge from perishing along
with himself; together they make man--what nature has not made
him--all-powerful and eternal. It is the privilege and duty of
history to trace the course of national progress along these paths
also.


Italian Measures


Measurement necessarily presupposes the development of the several
ideas of units of time, of space, and of weight, and of a whole
consisting of equal parts, or in other words of number and of
a numeral system. The most obvious bases presented by nature for
this purpose are, in reference to time, the periodic returns of
the sun and moon, or the day and the month; in reference to space,
the length of the human foot, which is more easily applied in
measuring than the arm; in reference to gravity, the burden which
a man is able to poise (-librare-) on his hand while he holds
his arm stretched out, or the "weight" (-libra-). As a basis for
the notion of a whole made up of equal parts, nothing so readily
suggests itself as the hand with its five, or the hands with their
ten, fingers; upon this rests the decimal system. We have already
observed that these elements of all numeration and measuring
reach back not merely beyond the separation of the Greek and Latin
stocks, but even to the most remote primeval times. The antiquity
in particular of the measurement of time by the moon is demonstrated
by language;(1) even the mode of reckoning the days that elapse
between the several phases of the moon, not forward from the phase
on which it had entered last, but backward from that which was
next to be expected, is at least older than the separation of the
Greeks and Latins.


Decimal System


The most definite evidence of the antiquity and original exclusive
use of the decimal system among the Indo-Germans is furnished by
the well-known agreement of all Indo-Germanic languages in respect
to the numerals as far as a hundred inclusive.(2) In the case of
Italy the decimal system pervaded all the earliest arrangements: it
may be sufficient to recall the number ten so usual in the case of
witnesses, securities, envoys, and magistrates, the legal equivalence
of one ox and ten sheep, the partition of the canton into ten curies
and the pervading application generally of the decurial system, the
-limitatio-, the tenth in offerings and in agriculture, decimation,
and the praenomen -Decimus-. Among the applications of this most
ancient decimal system in the sphere of measuring and of writing,
the remarkable Italian ciphers claim a primary place. When the Greeks
and Italians separated, there were still evidently no conventional
signs of number. On the other hand we find the three oldest and
most indispensable numerals, one, five, and ten, represented by
three signs--I, V or /\, X, manifestly imitations of the outstretched
finger, and the open hand single and double--which were not derived
either from the Hellenes or the Phoenicians, but were common to
the Romans, Sabellians, and Etruscans. They were the first steps
towards the formation of a national Italian writing, and at the same
time evidences of the liveliness of that earlier inland intercourse
among the Italians which preceded their transmarine commerce.(3)
Which of the Italian stocks invented, and which of them borrowed,
these signs, can of course no longer be ascertained. Other traces
of the pure decimal system occur but sparingly in this field;
among them are the -versus-, the Sabellian measure of surface of
100 square feet,(4) and the Roman year of 10 months.


The Duodecimal System


Otherwise generally in the case of those Italian measures, which
were not connected with Greek standards and were probably developed
by the Italians before they came into contact with the Greeks, there
prevailed the partition of the "whole" (-as-) into twelve "units"
(-unciae-). The very earliest Latin priesthoods, the colleges of
the Salii and Arvales,(5) as well as the leagues of the Etruscan
cities, were organized on the basis of the number twelve. The
same number predominated in the Roman system of weights and in the
measures of length, where the pound (-libra-) and the foot (-pes-)
were usually subdivided into twelve parts; the unit of the Roman
measures of surface was the "driving" (-actus-) of 120 square feet,
a combination of the decimal and duodecimal systems.(6) Similar
arrangements as to the measures of capacity may have passed into
oblivion.

If we inquire into the basis of the duodecimal system and consider
how it can have happened that, in addition to ten, twelve should
have been so early and universally singled out from the equal series
of numbers, we shall probably be able to find no other source to
which it can be referred than a comparison of the solar and lunar
periods. Still more than the double hand of ten fingers did the
solar cycle of nearly twelve lunar periods first suggest to man
the profound conception of an unit composed of equal units, and
thereby originate the idea of a system of numbers, the first step
towards mathematical thought. The consistent duodecimal development
of this idea appears to have belonged to the Italian nation, and
to have preceded the first contact with the Greeks.


Hellenic Measures in Italy


But when at length the Hellenic trader had opened up the route to
the west coast of Italy, the measures of surface remained unaffected,
but the measures of length, of weight, and above all of capacity--in
other words those definite standards without which barter and traffic
are impossible--experienced the effects of the new international
intercourse. The oldest Roman foot has disappeared; that which we
know, and which was in use at a very early period among the Romans,
was borrowed from Greece, and was, in addition to its new Roman
subdivision into twelfths, divided after the Greek fashion into four
hand-breadths (-palmus-) and sixteen finger-breadths (-digitus-).
Further, the Roman weights were brought into a fixed proportional
relation to the Attic system, which prevailed throughout Sicily
but not in Cumae--another significant proof that the Latin traffic
was chiefly directed to the island; four Roman pounds were assumed as
equal to three Attic -minae-, or rather the Roman pound was assumed
as equal to one and a half of the Sicilian -litrae- or half-minae.(7)
But the most singular and chequered 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- after --medimnos--, -congius- from
--choeus--, -hemina-, -cyathus-) or by translation (-acetabulum-from
--ozubaphon--); while conversely --zesteis-- 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 equalized in water-weight 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 --medimnos-- 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 and 1000, perhaps also for 100, 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.


The Italian Calendar before the Period of Greek Influence in Italy


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 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 in earlier times, 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--was
by days, which, as already mentioned, were counted not forward
from the phase that had last occurred, but backward from that which
was next expected; by lunar weeks, which varied in length between
7 and 8 days, the average length being 7 3/8; and by lunar months
which in like manner were sometimes of 29, sometimes of 30 days,
the average duration of the synodical month being 29 days 12 hours
44 minutes. For some time the day continued to be among the Italians
the smallest, and the month the largest, division of time. It was
not until afterwards that they began to distribute day and night
respectively into four portions, and it was much later still when
they began to employ the division into hours; which explains why
even stocks otherwise closely related differed in their mode of
fixing the commencement of day, the Romans placing it at midnight,
the Sabellians and the Etruscans at noon. No calendar of the year
had, at least when the Greeks separated from the Italians, as yet
been organized, for the names for the year and its divisions in the
two languages have been formed quite independently of each other.
Nevertheless the Italians appear to have already in the pre-Hellenic
period advanced, if not to the arrangement of a fixed calendar,
at any rate to the institution of two larger units of time. The
simplifying of the reckoning according to lunar months by the
application of the decimal system, which was usual among the Romans,
and the designation of a term of ten months as a "ring" (-annus-)
or complete year, bear in them all the traces of a high antiquity.
Later, but still at a period very early and undoubtedly previous
to the operation of Greek influences, the duodecimal system (as
we have already stated) was developed in Italy, and, as it derived
its very origin from the observation of the fact that the solar
period was equal to twelve lunar periods, it was certainly applied
in the first instance to the reckoning of time. This view accords
with the fact that the individual names of the months--which can
only have originated after the month was viewed as part of a solar
year--particularly those of March and of May, were similar among
the different branches of the Italian stock, while there was
no similarity between the Italian names and the Greek. It is not
improbable therefore that the problem of laying down a practical
calendar which should correspond at once to the moon and the sun--a
problem which may be compared in some sense to the quadrature of the
circle, and the solution of which was only recognized as impossible
and abandoned after the lapse of many centuries--had already employed
the minds of men in Italy before the epoch at which their contact
with the Greeks began; these purely national attempts to solve it,
however, have passed into oblivion.


The Oldest Italo-Greek Calendar


What we know of the oldest calendar of Rome and of some other Latin
cities--as to the Sabellian and Etruscan measurement of time we
have no traditional information--is decidedly based on the oldest
Greek arrangement of the year, which was intended to answer both
to the phases of the moon and to the seasons of the solar year,
constructed on the assumption of a lunar period of 29 1/2 days and
a solar period of 12 1/2 lunar months or 368 3/4 days, and on the
regular alternation of a full month or month of thirty days with a
hollow month or month of twenty-nine days and of a year of twelve
with a year of thirteen months, but at the same time maintained
in some sort of harmony with the actual celestial phenomena by
arbitrary curtailments and intercalations. It is possible that
this Greek arrangement of the year in the first instance came into
use among the Latins without undergoing any alteration; but the
oldest form of the Roman year which can be historically recognized
varied from its model, not indeed in the cyclical result nor yet in
the alternation of years of twelve with years of thirteen months,
but materially in the designation and in the measuring off of the
individual months. The Roman year began with the beginning of
spring; the first month in it and the only one which bears the name
of a god, was named from Mars (-Martius-), the three following from
sprouting (-aprilis-) growing (-maius-), and thriving (-iunius-),
the fifth onward to the tenth from their ordinal numbers (-quinctilis-,
-sextilis-, -september-, -october-, -november-, -december), the
eleventh from commencing (-ianuarius-),(8) with reference presumably
to the renewal of agricultural operations that followed midwinter
and the season of rest, the twelfth, and in an ordinary year the
last, from cleansing (-februarius-). To this series recurring
in regular succession there was added in the intercalary year a
nameless "labour-month" (-mercedonius-) at the close of the year,
viz. after February. And, as the Roman calendar was independent
as respected the names of the months which were probably taken from
the old national ones, it was also independent as regarded their
duration. Instead of the four years of the Greek cycle, each
composed of six months of 30 and six of 29 days and an intercalary
month inserted every second year alternately of 29 and 30 days (354 +
384 + 354 + 383 = 1475 days), the Roman calendar substituted four
years, each containing four months--the first, third, fifth, and
eighth--of 31 days and seven of 29 days, with a February of 28
days during three years and of 29 in the fourth, and an intercalary
month of 27 days inserted every second year (355 + 383 + 355 +
382 = 1475 days). In like manner this calendar departed from the
original division of the month into four weeks, sometimes of 7,
sometimes of 8 days; it made the eight-day-week run on through the
years without regard to the other relations of the calendar, as our
Sundays do, and placed the weekly market on the day with which it
began (-noundinae-). Along with this it once for all fixed the
first quarter in the months of 31 days on the seventh, in those
of 29 on the fifth day, and the full moon in the former on the
fifteenth, in the latter on the thirteenth day. As the course of
the months was thus permanently arranged, it was henceforth necessary
to proclaim only the number of days lying between the new moon and
the first quarter; thence the day of the newmoon received the name
of "proclamation-day" (-kalendae-). The first day of the second
section of the month, uniformly of 8 days, was--in conformity with
the Roman custom of reckoning, which included the -terminus ad
quem- --designated as "nine-day" (-nonae-). The day of the full
moon retained the old name of -idus- (perhaps "dividing-day").
The motive lying at the bottom of this strange remodelling of the
calendar seems chiefly to have been a belief in the salutary virtue
of odd numbers;(9) and while in general it is based on the oldest
form of the Greek year, its variations from that form distinctly
exhibit the influence of the doctrines of Pythagoras, which were
then paramount in Lower Italy, and which especially turned upon a
mystic view of numbers. But the consequence was that this Roman
calendar, clearly as it bears traces of the desire that it should
harmonize with the course both of sun and moon, in reality by
no means so corresponded with the lunar course as did at least on
the whole its Greek model, while, like the oldest Greek cycle, it
could only follow the solar seasons by means of frequent arbitrary
excisions, and did in all probability follow them but very imperfectly,
for it is scarcely likely that the calendar would be handled with
greater skill than was manifested in its original arrangement.
The retention moreover of the reckoning by months or--which is the
same thing--by years of ten months implies a tacit, but not to be
misunderstood, confession of the irregularity and untrustworthiness
of the oldest Roman solar year. This Roman calendar may be regarded,
at least in its essential features, as that generally current
among the Latins. When we consider how generally the beginning of
the year and the names of the months are liable to change, minor
variations in the numbering and designations are quite compatible
with the hypothesis of a common basis; and with such a calendar-system,
which practically was irrespective of the lunar course, the Latins
might easily come to have their months of arbitrary length, possibly
marked off by annual festivals--as in the case of the Alban months,
which varied between 16 and 36 days. It would appear probable
therefore that the Greek --trieteris-- had early been introduced
from Lower Italy at least into Latium and perhaps also among the
other Italian stocks, and had thereafter been subjected in the
calendars of the several cities to further subordinate alterations.

For the measuring of periods of more than one year the regnal years
of the kings might have been employed: but it is doubtful whether
that method of dating, which was in use in the East, occurred in Greece
or Italy during earlier times. On the other hand the intercalary
period recurring every four years, and the census and lustration
of the community connected with it, appear to have suggested
a reckoning by -lustra- similar in plan to the Greek reckoning by
Olympiads--a method, however, which early lost its chronological
significance in consequence of the irregularity that now prevailed
as to the due holding of the census at the right time.


Introduction of Hellenic Alphabets into Italy


The art of expressing sounds by written signs was of later origin
than the art of measurement. The Italians did not any more than
the Hellenes develop such an art of themselves, although we may
discover attempts at such a development in the Italian numeral
signs,(10) and possibly also in the primitive Italian custom--formed
independently of Hellenic influence--of drawing lots by means
of wooden tablets. The difficulty which must have attended the
first individualizing of sounds--occurring as they do in so great
a variety of combinations--is best demonstrated by the fact that a
single alphabet propagated from people to people and from generation
to generation has sufficed, and still suffices, for the whole of
Aramaic, Indian, Graeco-Roman, and modern civilization; and this
most important product of the human intellect was the joint creation
of the Aramaeans and the Indo-Germans. The Semitic family of
languages, in which the vowel has a subordinate character and never
can begin a word, facilitates on that very account the individualizing
of the consonants; and it was among the Semites accordingly that
the first alphabet--in which the vowels were still wanting--was
invented. It was the Indians and Greeks who first independently
of each other and by very divergent methods created, out of the
Aramaean consonantal writing brought to them by commerce, a complete
alphabet by the addition of the vowels--which was effected by the
application of four letters, which the Greeks did not use as consonantal
signs, for the four vowels -a -e -i -o, and by the formation of a
new sign for -u --in other words by the introduction of the syllable
into writing instead of the mere consonant, or, as Palamedes says
in Euripides,

--Ta teis ge leitheis pharmak orthosas monos
Aphona kai phonounta, sullabas te theis,
Ezeupon anthropoisi grammat eidenai.--

This Aramaeo-Hellenic alphabet was accordingly brought to the
Italians through the medium, doubtless, of the Italian Hellenes;
not, however, through the agricultural colonies of Magna Graecia,
but through the merchants possibly of Cumae or Tarentum, by whom it
would be brought in the first instance to the very ancient emporia
of international traffic in Latium and Etruria--to Rome and Caere.
The alphabet received by the Italians was by no means the oldest
Hellenic one; it had already experienced several modifications,
particularly the addition of the three letters --"id:xi", --"id:phi",
--"id:chi" and the alteration of the signs for --"id:iota",
--"id:gamma", --"id:lambda".(11) We have already observed(12) that
the Etruscan and Latin alphabets were not derived the one from the
other, but both directly from the Greek; in fact the Greek alphabet
came to Etruria in a form materially different from that which
reached Latium. The Etruscan alphabet has a double sign -s (sigma
-"id:s" and san -"id:sh") and only a single -k,(13) and of the
-r only the older form -"id:P"; the Latin has, so far as we know,
only a single -s, but a double sign for -k (kappa -"id:k" and koppa
-"id:q") and of the -r almost solely the more recent form -"id:R".
The oldest Etruscan writing shows no knowledge of lines, and winds
like the coiling of a snake; the more recent employs parallel
broken-off lines from right to left: the Latin writing, as far as
our monuments reach back, exhibits only the latter form of parallel
lines, which originally perhaps may have run at pleasure from left
to right or from right to left, but subsequently ran among the Romans
in the former, and among the Faliscans in the latter direction.
The model alphabet brought to Etruria must notwithstanding its
comparatively remodelled character reach back to an epoch very ancient,
though not positively to be determined; for, as the two sibilants
sigma and san were always used by the Etruscans as different
sounds side by side, the Greek alphabet which came to Etruria must
doubtless still have possessed both of them in this way as living
signs of sound; but among all the monuments of the Greek language
known to us not one presents sigma and san in simultaneous use.

The Latin alphabet certainly, as we know it, bears on the whole
a more recent character; and it is not improbable that the Latins
did not simply receive the alphabet once for all, as was the case
in Etruria, but in consequence of their lively intercourse with
their Greek neighbours kept pace for a considerable period with
the alphabet in use among these, and followed its variations. We
find, for instance, that the forms -"id:/\/\/", -"id:P",(14) and
-"id:SIGMA" were not unknown to the Romans, but were superseded
in common use by the later forms -"id:/\/\", -"id:R", and -"id:S"
--a circumstance which can only be explained by supposing that
the Latins employed for a considerable period the Greek alphabet
as such in writing either their mother-tongue or Greek. It is
dangerous therefore to draw from the more recent character of the
Greek alphabet which we meet with in Rome, as compared with the
older character of that brought to Etruria, the inference that
writing was practised earlier in Etruria than in Rome.

The powerful impression produced by the acquisition of the treasure
of letters on those who received them, and the vividness with which
they realized the power that slumbered in those humble signs, are
illustrated by a remarkable vase from a sepulchral chamber of Caere
built before the invention of the arch, which exhibits the old
Greek model alphabet as it came to Etruria, and also an Etruscan
syllabarium formed from it, which may be compared to that
of Palamedes--evidently a sacred relic of the introduction and
acclimatization of alphabetic writing in Etruria.


Development of Alphabets in Italy