[teddyh]

  The gods confound the man who first found out
  how to distinguish hours! Confound him, too,
  who in this place set up a sundial,
  to cut and hack my days so wretchedly
  into small portions! When I was a boy,
  my belly was my sundial — one surer,
  truer, and more exact than any of them.
  This dial told me when ’twas proper time
  to go to dinner, when I had aught to eat;
  But nowadays, why even when I have,
  I can’t fall-to unless the sun gives leave.
  The town’s so full of these confounded dials
  the greatest part of the inhabitants,
  shrunk up with hunger, crawl along the street.

— Plautus (c.254-184 BC)

(Originally posted 11 years ago: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7007731#7008338>)

[Y_Y]

(Originally posted 2225 years ago: https://la.wikisource.org/wiki/Comoediae_(Plautus)_-_Boeotia )