Plautus

There leaps out from them a little being.

Omuncio, Plautus would say.

This little being is joyous.

He has not food every day, and he goes to the play every evening if he sees good.

There leaps out from them a little being.

Omuncio, Plautus would say.

this little being is joyous he has not food every day and he goes to the play every evening if he sees good he has no shirt on his body no shoes on his feet no roof over his head he is like the flies of heaven who have none of these things he is from seven to thirteen years of age he lives in bands roams the streets lodges in the open air wears an old pair of trousers of his father's which descend below his heels an old hat of some other father which descends below his ears a single suspender of yellow listing He runs, lies in wait, rummages about, wastes time, blackens pipes, swears like a convict, haunts the wine shops, knows thieves, calls gay women thou, talks slang, sings obscene songs, and has no evil in his heart.

This is because he has in his heart a pearl.

How long do you think people have believed in ghosts, Smarty Pants? 100 years? 1,000 years? Longer?

The first known mention of a haunted house is in a play written in 210 BCE by the Roman author Plautus.

That's over 2,233 years ago! What was the play about?

It was called Mastelaria, or The Ghost Play, which itself is thought to be an adaptation of an even older ghost story called Phasma, which means people believed in ghosts even earlier than that.

For while among the Greeks the poets were the most ancient species of learned men, since Homer and Hesiod lived before the foundation of Rome, and Archilochus was a contemporary of Romulus, we received poetry much later.

For it was about five hundred and ten years after the building of Rome before Livius published a play in the consulship of Caius Claudius, the son of Caecus, and Marcus Tuditanus, a year before the birth of Ennius, who was older than Plautus and Naevius.

2.

It was, therefore, late before poets were either known or received among us, though we find in Cato, De Originibus, that the guests used, at their entertainments, to sing the praises of famous men to the sound of the flute.

I shall return shortly with Act Two.

Plautus, the ancient Roman dramatist who inspired even Shakespeare, once said, I hate gold.

It has persuaded too many men in too many matters to do evil.

And evil it is, surely, to kill for money.

For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Hegel v. Kierkegaard chapter fourteen about the same time as my legal studies were thus beginning i planned out a study of philosophy and ascetics on a large scale as well my day was systematically filled up from early morning till late at night and there was time for everything for ancient and modern languages for law lessons from the coach for the lectures in philosophy which professors h brokner and r nielsen were holding for more advanced students and for independent reading of a literary scientific and historic description One of the masters who had taught me at school, a very erudite philologian, now Dr. Oscar Seasby, offered me gratuitous instruction.

And with his help, several of the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides, various things of Plato's and comedies by Plautus and Terence were carefully studied.

Frederick Nutzhorn read the Edda and the Nibelungenlied with me in the originals.

with jeanne's pol de mulier i went through the new testament in greek and with julius lang aeschylus sophocles pindar horace and ovid and a little of aristotle and theocritus catulus marcel and caesar i read for myself but i did not find any positive inspiration in my studies until i approached my nineteenth year in philosophy i had hitherto mastered only a few books by cern kirkagort but now i began a conscientious study of heiberg's philosophical writings and honestly endeavored to make myself familiar with his speculative logic as heiberg's prose writings came out in the eighteen sixty one edition they were studied with extreme care heiberg's death in eighteen sixty was a great grief to me as a thinker i had loved and revered him the clearness of form and the internal obscurity of his adaptation of hegel's teachings gave one a certain artistic satisfaction at the same time that it provoked an effort really to understand but in the nature of things heiberg's philosophical life-work could not to a student be other than an admission into hegel's train of thought and an introduction

The mountains labor, a poor mouse is born, that he's gone mad, even mad, Orestes swears.

Moreover, he involves everything in such an inextricable confusion, that the saying of Plautus might be applied to him.

This is what none but a syllable will ever read.

To understand him, we must be prophets.

For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Hegel v. Kierkegaard chapter fourteen about the same time as my legal studies were thus beginning i planned out a study of philosophy and ascetics on a large scale as well my day was systematically filled up from early morning till late at night and there was time for everything for ancient and modern languages for law lessons from the coach for the lectures in philosophy which professors h brokner and r nielsen were holding for more advanced students and for independent reading of a literary scientific and historic description One of the masters who had taught me at school, a very erudite philologian, now Dr. Oscar Seasby, offered me gratuitous instruction.

And with his help, several of the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides, various things of Plato's and comedies by Plautus and Terence were carefully studied.

Frederick Nutzhorn read the Edda and the Nibelungenlied with me in the originals.

with jeanne's pol de mulier i went through the new testament in greek and with julius lang eschalus sophocles pindar horace and ovid and a little of aristotle and theocritus catulus marshal and csar i read for myself but i did not find any positive inspiration in my studies until i approached my nineteenth year in philosophy i had hitherto mastered only a few books by cern but now i began a conscientious study of heiberg's philosophical writings and honestly endeavored to make myself familiar with his speculative logic As Heiberg's prose writings came out in the 1861 edition, they were studied with extreme care.

Hegel v. Kierkegaard chapter fourteen about the same time as my legal studies were thus beginning i planned out a study of philosophy and ascetics on a large scale as well my day was systematically filled up from early morning till late at night and there was time for everything for ancient and modern languages for law lessons from the coach for the lectures in philosophy which professors h brokner and r nielsen were holding for more advanced students and for independent reading of a literary scientific and historic description One of the masters who had taught me at school, a very erudite philologian, now Dr. Oscar Seasby, offered me gratuitous instruction.

And with his help, several of the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides, various things of Plato's and comedies by Plautus and Terence were carefully studied.

Frederick Nutzhorn read the Edda and the Nibelungenlied with me in the originals.

with jeanne's pol de mulier i went through the new testament in greek and with julius lang eschalus sophocles pindar horace and ovid and a little of aristotle and theocritus catulus marshal and csar i read for myself but i did not find any positive inspiration in my studies until i approached my nineteenth year in philosophy i had hitherto mastered only a few books by cern kirkagort but now i began a conscientious study of heiberg's philosophical writings and honestly endeavored to make myself familiar with his speculative logic as heiberg's prose writings came out in the eighteen sixty one edition they were studied with extreme care heiberg's death in eighteen sixty was a great grief to me as a thinker i had loved and revered him the clearness of form and the internal obscurity of his adaptation of hegel's teachings gave one a certain artistic satisfaction at the same time that it provoked an effort really to understand but in the nature of things heiberg's philosophical life-work could not to a student be other than an admission into hegel's train of thought and an introduction to the master's own works i was not aware that by eighteen sixty europe had long passed his works by in favor of more modern thinking with a passionate desire to reach a comprehension of the truth i grappled with the system began with the encyclopedia read the three volumes of ascetics the philosophy of love the philosophy of history the phenomenology of the mind then the philosophy of law again, and finally the logic, the natural philosophy, and the philosophy of the mind, in a veritable intoxication of comprehension