Monasticism and the First Mechanical Clocks

Had I been speaking in an ancient Athenian law court rather than in modern Japan, my address would have been timed, not by a chess clock but by a clepsydra. Aristophanes1 and Aristotle2 both testify to its use in the courts, and the custom was still remembered in the time of Lucian, or a little later, when he or an imitator reported that Demades had made fun of Demosthenes for preferring water to wine. ‘Others spoke to water, but Demosthenes wrote to it ’.3 Roman senators timed their discourse by means of the clepsydra, as Pliny, Cicero and others bear out; and Cicero indicates that the very acts of asking and giving leave to speak were described, respectively, as ‘ seeking the clock ’ and ‘giving the clock ’.4 The clepsydra was used in ancient Greece for timing military watches5 and for astronomical measurement.6 It is said that according to Lucian it was used — and if this were not so dubious a reference it would be the oldest historical reference to such a use — for sounding a bell.7 There is nothing intrinsically surprising about a Greek hydraulic automaton capable of sounding a bell at regular intervals, for Ctesibius had previously, by means described in some detail by Vitruvius, that is, by hydraulic timepieces, caused figures to move, pillars to turn, stones and eggs to fall, trumpets to sound, and other displays (parerga)8 Other winter timepieces described by Vitruvius, driven likewise by water power, required a measure of astronomical understanding if they were to be used to yield the time, having as they did an astrolabe dia1.9