Daily Inspiration Quote by Plautus

A groan disguised as a tally: Plautus isn’t marveling at a crowd, he’s indicting it. “How great in number” borrows the language of public pride (big populations, big audiences, big majorities) and flips it into a punchline. The line lands because it treats small-mindedness not as an exception but as the default setting of civic life. Quantity becomes the enemy of judgment.

Plautus, writing popular comedy in the Roman Republic, knew exactly how mass taste and public opinion could curdle into cruelty, stinginess, and self-satisfaction. His plays are full of swaggering soldiers, grasping misers, busybodies, and petty moralists - figures who aren’t monsters so much as familiar types. This quote compresses that whole gallery into one bleak statistic. It’s also a shrewd bit of self-protection: by blaming “little minded men” in the aggregate, Plautus can needle the audience while leaving each individual room to laugh and assume he means someone else.

The subtext is less “people are dumb” than “mediocrity organizes.” Small minds don’t just exist; they multiply, reinforce each other, and set the tone. In a culture that prized status, patronage, and face-saving, calling someone “little minded” targets the social machinery: the suspicion of ambition, the reflex to police others, the comfort of received opinion. Plautus makes the insult feel observational, almost weary - as if he’s counted them. That’s the cynicism that keeps the joke sharp: not outrage, but recognition.