greatest part of its inhabitants,Shrunk up with hunger, creep along the streets. Plautus's protagonist here complains about the social discipline and expectations that arose when these measurements of time were introduced. The invention of artificial units of time measurement made the introduction of time management possible, and time management was not universally appreciated by those whose time was managed. Western religious influences In western Europe, the practice of Christian monasticism introduced new factors into the time discipline observed by members of religious communities. The rule of Saint Benedict introduced canonical hours; these were religious observances that were held on a daily basis, and based on factors again mostly unrelated to natural phenomena. It is no surprise, then, that religious communities were likely the inventors, and certainly the major consumers, of early clocks. The invention of the mechanical clock in western Europe, and its subsequent technical developments, enabled a public time discipline even less related to natural phenomena. (Highly sophisticated clepsydras existed in China, where they were used by astrologers connected with the imperial court; these water clocks were quite large, and their use limited to those who were professionally interested in precise timekeeping.) The invention of the clock The English word clock comes from an Old French word for "bell," for the striking feature of early clocks was a greater concern than their dials. Shakespeare's Sonnet XII begins, "When I do count the clock that tells the time." Even after the introduction of the clock face, clocks were costly, and found mostly in the homes of aristocrats. The vast majority of urban dwellers had to rely on clock towers, and outside the sight of their dials or the sound of their bells, clock time held no sway. Clock towers did define the time of day, at least for those who could hear and see them. As the saying goes, "a person with a clock always knows what time it is; a person with two clocks is never sure." Improvements of the clock The discipline imposed by these public clocks still remained lax by contemporary standards. A clock that only strikes the hours can only record the nearest hour that has passed; most early clocks had only hour hands in any case. Minute hands did not come into widespread use until the pendulum enabled a large leap in the accuracy of clocks; for watches, a similar leap in accuracy was not