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Thanks, tsuwm, yes, that's the quotation in Dickens. Didn't know about 'intercapedo', very interesting. 'Capedo' is said to designate one type of vessel used to hold the entrails in Roman sacrifices (see, for example, 'Manual of classical literature' by Eschenburg and Fiske on Google Books, yay for online references :)). If this line of thinking is followed, it could cautiously be inferred that 'intercapedo' (also translated as 'an intermission') points to that very short mo(ment) of rest and preparation - briefly after the body has been purified (or, rather, the entrails have been purified in preparation for their sacrifice, for it was the entrails that were sacrificed and the actual meat of the body utilized, i.e. consumed, after that, right? or I may be mistaken...) and just before it was sacrificed to the Gods. In other words, the restful interval of intermission between the earthly and heavenly life and the only moment when earthly creatures (men) could gain the benevolence of Gods and, thus, become moral and feel the deified experience of afterlife.
Of course, this is a purely speculative inference, yet, in this sense, it would seem to guide towards a more general meaning of 'intercapedo' and 'a space of time' as the earthly life - in all its impurities and in all endeavours to get rid of them in preparation for the passing into the purer heavenly dwelling. Romans, like the Greeks, then seem to have had an awareness of time that was very morally bound.
The 'space thing' must have occured later - when a conception of time was already imbued with more objectivity, i.e. a connection of time to the physical duration that was observed from men's surroundings (16th century, as OED says?).
Which is what, I suppose, I meant with the above post, BranShea. Time, as you say, is a more or less illusionary concept, a subjective experience and that's a very frustrating thought - hence our man-made devices to elevate it to a fact, to a comforting objectivity like the seeming objectivity of space which lays before us in its varied natural and manly incarnations. If one can impregnate time with and ground it in the indubitable fact of passing, moving space (motion, like the passing frames of cinema), doesn't it become more objective, a certainty, still illusionary, as we realize in the back of our heads, yet very comfortingly so?
Like these Romans, who knew that earthly life was never to be purified well enough to the point of heavenly existence, yet felt comforted by the illusion of closeness between the two lives during the intermission of the sacrifice...
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Carpal Tunnel
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a subjective experience and that's a very frustrating thought -Maybe this need to elevate man-made devices is not merely caused by frustration but for a large part by the need to organize society. Sun dials in early history, the invention and development of clocks are the result of man's wish for efficiency. To get organized. The Book and film about John Harrison's struggle to conquer the longitude problem is fascinating in this context as it is about the struggle to find how time can help to know distance and coordinates. Longitude
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Carpal Tunnel
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see also Longitude by Dava Sobel.
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I've read the book of Rupert Gould, but I see the movie (BBC serial) was written by Dava Sobel and Charles Sturridge. I kept them on video (two cassettes) and must have watched it 4 or 5 times. Really captivating. Though Michael Gambon in the advertisement is not mentioned as Star, he as John Harrison is great in this sea clock epic. imo. TV
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addict
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and as a clever scientist proved time passes quicker at the top of a ladder and slower in a basement/cellar...time is relative to space...again I push The Forever War by Joe Haldeman as a brilliant explanation of the difficulties of time relative to the space (and actual space  ) you are in...time is, after all, the fourth dimension...
----The next sentence is true. The previous sentence is false----
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I've made a note for when I finish the Master and Margarita. (Where there's also some juggling with dimensions going on) 
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Bran, are you reading M and M in English? if so, which translation?
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Maybe this need to elevate man-made devices is not merely caused by frustration but for a large part by the need to organize society. Sun dials in early history, the invention and development of clocks are the result of man's wish for efficiency. To get organized. The Book and film about John Harrison's struggle to conquer the longitude problem is fascinating in this context as it is about the struggle to find how time can help to know distance and coordinates. Longitude
Good point, BranShea. I suppose though that earlier history rulers were more preoccupied with organizing their power in respect to other nations than the more contemporary notion of efficiency. The progress of scientific principles, after all, was always driven by few interested individuals backed up by some equally interested elite, should such have been present. The understanding that these principles could be applied to society, the understanding that a society could be kept under control when made and kept better off rather than worse off is a relatively new concept, no?
Will deffinetely check out 'Longitude', hadn't heard of the book or the film. Daniel Kehlmann's 'Measuring the world' comes to mind, though it's a fiction novel.
M & M is a beautiful book. Speaking of filming versions, there is a lot of controversy and peculiar turn of fate around the struggles to adapt it to the screen...
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Reading the Pleonasm thread, it would seem that 'fiction novel' made me 'guilty' of a pleonastic mistake...
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