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traces could be got of the murderer. Rule undertook the functions of the
detective, and pressed into the service the influence of his own
profession. He preached a great sermon on the occasion, to which all the
neighbouring people were summoned; and behold in the time of his sermon,
an old man near eighty years was awakened, and fell a-weeping, and
before the whole company acknowledged that at the building of that
house, he was the murderer."

The main features of the story have changed very little in the course of
ages, except in the important point of the conviction of the murderer,
which would have been effected in a very different way in a Greek story.
Doubtless a similar tale could be found in the folk-lore of almost any
nation.

Plutarch[32] relates how, in his native city of Chaeronaea, a certain
Damon had been murdered in some baths. Ghosts continued to haunt the
spot ever afterwards, and mysterious groans were heard, so that at last
the doors were walled up. "And to this very day," he continues, "those
who live in the neighbourhood imagine that they see strange sights and
are terrified with cries of sorrow."

It is quite clear from Plautus that ghost stories, even if not taken
very seriously, aroused a wide-spread interest in the average Roman of
his day, just as they do in the average Briton of our own. They were
doubtless discussed in a half-joking way. The apparitions were generally
believed to frighten people, just as they are at present, though the
well-authenticated stories of such occurrences would seem to show that
genuine ghosts, or whatever one likes to call them, have the power of
paralyzing fear.

In the _Mostellaria_,[33] Plautus uses a ghost as a recognized piece of
supernatural machinery. The regulation father of Roman comedy has gone
away on a journey, and in the meantime the son has, as usual, almost
reached the end of his father's fortune. The father comes back
unexpectedly, and the son turns in despair to his faithful slave,
Tranio, for help. Tranio is equal to the occasion, and undertakes to
frighten the inconvenient parent away again. He gives an account of an
apparition that has been seen, and has announced that it is the ghost of
a stranger from over-seas, who has been dead for six years.

"Here must I dwell," it had declared, "for the gods of the lower world
will not receive me, seeing that I died before my time. My host murdered
me, his guest, villain that he was, for the gold t