Theatrum Mundi

This metaphor can take various forms, some more deterministic than others, and has also been formulated in different fashions, such as the world as chess game by the Persian philosopher Omar Khayyam.

The world as a stage was expressed among the ancient Greeks, and especially gained popularity among Stoic and Neoplatonist philosophers such as Plotinus in the late antiquity of the Roman Empire.

John of Salisbury, a 12th-century theologian especially coined the term theatrum mundi, characterized by commenting that saints "despise the theater of this world from the heights of their virtue".

In several chapters of the third book of his Policraticus, a moral encyclopedia, he meditates on the fact that "the life of man on earth is a comedy, where each forgetting his own plays another's role".

This acceptation allows them to extract themselves from the theatrum mundi, to adopt a celestial position in the auditorium, and to watch and understand the roles played in the comedy.