Ancient Graeco-Roman Time

Shorter hours in Winter, longer in Summer. An ancient good idea?

Slow days have passed that make a year,
Slow hours that make a day... - Elizabeth Siddal

The Horae for today's cities

This digital timepiece has been inspired by a passion for the classical, Graeco-Roman way of understanding time, when daylight was presided over by twelve goddesses. Each goddess had a specific role for the duration of a certain hour.

Reload the page to view where the cities below are in each daylight hour of ancient times, with links to their modern time page.

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These deities were called, as a group, the Horai (Ὡραι) in Greek or Horae in Latin. Their task was to assist the Sun (Helios) in his daily passage from sunrise to sunset.

Rather than today's fixed lengths, the hours of the classical world varied in length: shorter in winter to reflect the shorter periods of daylight. Thus the Horae are calibrated to latitude, as you must do with sundials.

Read this article that presents in detail the 12 hours of the day , and which inspired the creation of this timepiece.

Explore Greek and Roman mythology and its connection with time starting with this Encyclopaedia Britannica entry about the Greek.