How did the Romans measure time?

[Flavivs Aetivs]

More importand was that they would hava had the sun in their back.

Holy crap that just made me think of something. The Sun sets in the west right?

Not only would the Huns have been attacking uphill, but the Battle of Chalons was joined at the Ninth hour of the day - meaning the hunnic troops would have had the sun in their eyes, reducing their effectiveness.

[Renatus]

I know from hard, bitter experience, that there is no more infuriated creature on earth than a sentry whose relief is late in arriving.

Oh God! I feel another joke coming on. It's from The Goon Show of blessed memory:

Peter Sellers (as William, an old soldier, standing guard): 'Oo goes there, mate?
Harry Secombe: It's all right, William lad. I've come to relieve you.
Sellers: You're too late, mate.

[M. Demetrius]

'rises' about an hour later each night

approximately 24/29ths of an hour, or around 49.6551724137931 minutes
mile:

[Diocle]

Here in Liguria the reading of the shadows' position and lenght is pretty simple: Watching at the sea and with the mountains at your backs, when the shadows is on the right and it's pretty long it's early in the morning, while when it's almost vanished it's noon and when is growing on the left it's afternoon, also the sky is easy to read if you know the place and the matter (my dad was a navy officer and he knew all the stars' names and their relative positions).

What shuold be very hard it was probably understanding the shadows and the stars positions, in a strange land, so far away from Italy, where the sky is frequently covered by clouds. yes, you have understood: I'm talking of the poor tirones who had to serve in Britain!

OK, let me post here (Evan already knows the matter because I've posted it on TWC) a wonderful passage from Heart of Darkness, by Conrand, it's at the very beginning of the novel, Marlow describes Britain seen from the eyes of a Roman, probably in those ancient times you should feel yourself lost much more deeply than today, today we have almost forgotten even the meaning of being lost ..... but at the times of Caesar or of Caludius .....

"I was thinking of very old times, when the Romans first came here, nineteen hundred years ago—the other day. . . . Light came out of this river since—you say Knights? Yes; but it is like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker—may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday. Imagine the feelings of a commander of a fine—what d'ye call 'em?—trireme in the Mediterranean, ordered suddenly to the north; run overland across the Gauls in a hurry; put in charge of one of these craft the legionaries,—a wonderful lot of handy men they must have been too—used to build, apparently by the hundred, in a month or two, if we may believe what we read. Imagine him here—the very end of the world, a sea the color of lead, a sky the color of smoke, a kind of ship about as rigid as a concertina—and going up this river with stores, or orders, or what you like. Sandbanks, marshes, forests, savages,—precious little to eat fit for a civilized man, nothing but Thames water to drink. No Falernian wine here, no going ashore. Here and there a military camp lost in a wilderness, like a needle in a bundle of hay—cold, fog, tempests, disease, exile, and death,—death skulking in the air, in the water, in the bush. They must have been dying like flies here. Oh yes—he did it. Did it very well, too, no doubt, and without thinking much about it either, except afterwards to brag of what he had gone through in his time, perhaps. They were men enough to face the darkness. And perhaps he was cheered by keeping his eye on a chance of promotion to the fleet at Ravenna by-and-by, if he had good friends in Rome and survived the awful climate. Or think of a decent young citizen in a toga—perhaps too much dice, you know—coming out here in the train of some prefect, or tax-gatherer, or trader even, to mend his fortunes. Land in a swamp, march through the woods, and in some inland post feel the savagery, the utter savagery, had closed round him,—all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men. There's no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable. And it has a fascination, too, that goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination—you know. Imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate."

He paused.

"Mind," he began again, lifting one arm from the elbow, the palm of the hand outwards, so that, with his legs folded before him, he had the pose of a Buddha preaching in European clothes and without a lotus-flower—"Mind, none of us would feel exactly like this. What saves us is efficiency—the devotion to efficiency. But these chaps were not much account, really. They were no colonists; their administration was merely a squeeze, and nothing more, I suspect. They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force—nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others. They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind—as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretense but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea—something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to. . . ."

[M. Demetrius]

(my dad was a navy officer and he knew all the stars' names and their relative positions).

I would lay a good sum of money that sailors in that day did, too--and some of them by the same names--and understood the seasons by the stars as they rose each evening. They understood that tides were predictable, although they probably did not understand what caused them.

Farmers, odds are, could predict weather and seasons from clouds and stars, since that's how they knew which crops to plant at which time. Whether the far rural farmer, or merchant ship captain had a calendar as we understand calendars is somebody else's biz to speculate. But they knew that when certain seasons approached, weather would be calm, stormy or unpredictable. Those who went against that knowledge did so at their peril.