How did the Ancient Romans view the hours in a day? What did a 1st hour equate to in modern terms, as well as the 2nd hour and so on?

 The ancient Romans, like many other ancient cultures, divided the day and night into twelve hours each. However, the length of an hour could vary depending on the season. Thus, the length of an hour during the day was longer in the summer and shorter in the winter, while the opposite was true for the nighttime hours.

In modern terms, if we were to equate the Roman hours to our contemporary fixed-duration hours, it would not be a straightforward conversion due to the variable length of the Roman hours. The modern concept of standardized, equal-length hours did not come into use until much later.

The Romans also had a system of splitting the daylight and nighttime into periods called "hora." The daylight period (from sunrise to sunset) was divided into 12 equal hours, while the nighttime period (from sunset to sunrise) was also divided into 12 equal hours. This meant that the length of each Roman hour could vary throughout the year.

To give you a general idea, during the equinoxes, when day and night are approximately equal in length, a Roman hour would be close to our modern hour. However, during the summer solstice, when the days are longer, a Roman hour would be longer than a modern hour, and during the winter solstice, when the days are shorter, a Roman hour would be shorter.

It's important to note that the division of the day into 24 hours of equal length, as we commonly use today, became more standardized in the medieval period and was widely adopted in the modern era. The ancient Roman concept of hours was based on a different system with variable hour lengths.