Talking about Time
If Einstein didn't know it at the time (though he probably did), he would have been pleased to learn that for the Romans, there was little difference between time and space. Grammatically, anyway. Even ubi, the Latin question word for “where,” can also mean “when”!
When talking about time, there are two different issues at hand. One issue deals with extent of time, or how long something lasted. The other issue is pinpointing exactly when, or at least within what time frame, an event occurred.
Accusative of Extent
In addition to its job marking direct objects of verbs and objects for most prepositions, the accusative case can also show extent of time or space.
In silvā trē s horā s ambulā bā mus.
In silvā tria milia passuum ambulā bā mus.
It is worth noting that English requires the preposition “for” while Latin uses none at all. In fact, the accusative and ablative case uses discussed in this chapter require prepositions in English, though not always in Latin.
The smallest unit of time in the Roman world was the hour (hō ra). The amount of time from sunrise to sunset was divided into twelfths using a sundial. An hour, then, was one-twelfth of the day. In the winter when days were short, so were the hours. In the summer the opposite was true. Nighttime was divided into four vigils (vigiliae). The end of the first vigil and the beginning of the second came when whatever constellation had been on the eastern horizon at sunset made it halfway up to the zenith.
Ablative of Time When or Within Which
You will recall that the locative case was one of the Proto-Indo-European cases that melded with the ablative in Latin. The job of the locative case was to show location. Given the Roman time/space equation, location on a calendar makes just as much sense as location on a map. The Ablative of Time When or Within Which does just that. It specifies a time or a time range. As with the other time expressions, no preposition is used in the Latin.
Decimā horā advē nit. (He arrived at the tenth hour.) Decem horī s advē nit. (He arrived within ten hours.)
