Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

Space and Time 47
Athens at least once or twice a year for official business, few are
likely to have done so on a regular basis, particularly those residing
in the outermost demes such as Marathon and Acharnai, some 25
to 30 miles from Athens. It is therefore highly likely that there was
a considerable gap in the lifestyle, as well as the political engagement,
of city dwellers and country dwellers.
A City of Contrasts
Athens would have struck the modern eye as a curious amalgam
of public magnificence and private squalor. It was a city to
be admired for the breathtaking beauty of its public buildings,
for which in the Classical Period there was no equivalent in the
entire Greek world. In regard to its housing and public amenities,
however, it may well have been inferior to many of its contemporaries.
It may strike one as remarkable that the Athenians, who
adorned their city with some of the most splendid buildings ever
constructed, were prepared to tolerate such discomfort in private.
It says everything about the difference in mentality between them
and us that no one ever suggested that their priorities should be
reversed.
TIME AND THE SEASONS
Dividing Up the Day
The Greek day was divided into 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours
of darkness, a system which, according to Herodotos (2.109.3), the
Greeks acquired from the Babylonians. As a result, the daylight
hours were longer in the summer than in the winter. Hours were
not subdivided into halves and quarters. In fact, the only way to tell
the time accurately was by means of the sundial, which was first
introduced into Greece in the sixth century b.c.e. and which they
also borrowed from the Babylonians. Sundials were extremely rare,
however, until the third century b.c.e. The natural divisions of the
day—dawn, midday, and dusk—no doubt served most people for
most purposes.
Only in the law courts was accurate timekeeping absolutely necessary,
because, from the fifth century b.c.e. onward, speeches had
to be timed down to the last second. This was done with the aid of a
water clock known as a klepsydra, a clay vessel that could be filled to
the level of an overflow hole just below the rim. When the speaker
began his delivery, a plug was removed from a small hole at the