Pendulum

1582 - Pisa Cathedral. Galileo Galilei noted the swinging of a chandelier - and the most accurate way of measuring time (until the 1930's) was discovered.

The Greeks had two words for time. "Chronos" was Galilei's type. "Kairos" a time in between, a moment of indeterminate time in which something special happens. Chronos - is about quantity. Kairos - is about quality.

And since we are being all classical what about "Carpe Diem" - a popular phrase these days. Horace (writing in the time of the Emperor Augustus) in his Odes said:

Don't ask (it's forbidden to know) what end the gods have granted to me or you, Leuconoe. Don't play with Babylonian fortune-telling either. How much better it is to endure whatever will be! Whether Jupiter has allotted to you many more winters or this final one which even now wears out the Tyrrhenian sea on the rocks - be wise, strain the wine, and scale back your long hopes to a short period. While we speak, envious time will have fled

carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.

Seize the day, trusting as little as possible in the future.