"For nobody is curious, who isn't malevolent"
About this Quote
Plautus laces this line like a sweet dessert with a bitter seed: curiosity, he suggests, isn’t innocent appetite but a kind of predation. “Nobody” is doing heavy work here. It’s not a warning about some people; it’s a blanket indictment of the social impulse to look, ask, eavesdrop. In a comic world built on overheard schemes and mistaken identities, that’s both a joke and a thesis statement. The audience is literally paying to be curious about other people’s mess. Plautus turns the mirror outward: you’re laughing, but you’re also implicated.
The word “malevolent” sharpens what could otherwise be a mild complaint about nosiness. Plautus isn’t talking about curiosity as philosophy or science; he’s talking about the street-level curiosity that fuels rumor, surveillance, and opportunistic meddling. In Roman comedy, information is power and power is usually used to humiliate someone: the boastful soldier, the lecherous old man, the slave who’s about to be outwitted. Curiosity becomes a moral pretext for cruelty, a way to justify crossing boundaries because you “just had to know.”
The subtext is cynical and savvy: people don’t pry because they love truth; they pry because they love leverage. Plautus, writing for a bustling, status-obsessed republic, understands that attention is rarely neutral. The line lands because it reframes a supposedly virtuous trait as a social weapon - and because comedy itself, with its delighted peeking behind curtains, depends on that uncomfortable fact.
The word “malevolent” sharpens what could otherwise be a mild complaint about nosiness. Plautus isn’t talking about curiosity as philosophy or science; he’s talking about the street-level curiosity that fuels rumor, surveillance, and opportunistic meddling. In Roman comedy, information is power and power is usually used to humiliate someone: the boastful soldier, the lecherous old man, the slave who’s about to be outwitted. Curiosity becomes a moral pretext for cruelty, a way to justify crossing boundaries because you “just had to know.”
The subtext is cynical and savvy: people don’t pry because they love truth; they pry because they love leverage. Plautus, writing for a bustling, status-obsessed republic, understands that attention is rarely neutral. The line lands because it reframes a supposedly virtuous trait as a social weapon - and because comedy itself, with its delighted peeking behind curtains, depends on that uncomfortable fact.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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