Finally, lest the apparent scientific rigour of the arguments of a text such as Proclus’ Elements of Theology might mislead one to think that a definitive science of divine first principles is achieved, Damascius’ Difficulties and Solutions Concerning First Principles provides an effective antidote to such an illusion. In this chapter I describe how Damascius exploits the contradictory arguments and conclusions that rational soul can develop in its reasonings with concepts about the divine. I argue that these dilemmas, these impasses suffered by the rational soul are not, as Damascius sees it, expressions of the ultimate failure of metaphysics, nor the stalemate of a sceptic which requires suspension of judgement, but a privileged place where the soul exercises its rational powers in an approach to the divine.

Four levels of music are distinguished by Proclus, going from audible music, through harmonics (theoretical music) up to the highest, divine music, that of philosophy as assimilated to the divine. Bringing these four levels of music into relation with the scale of virtues, I describe how audible music can have a role in the education of irrational affects on the level of ‘ethical’ virtue. On the level of ‘political’ virtue, harmonics provide knowledge inspiring political virtue and which is of use in producing morally beneficial audible music. I note how Proclus, in dealing with these themes in relation of Plato’s association of virtues with musical concords, made use of Ptolemy’s Harmonics and how Damascius both provides more information about Proclus’ views and criticizes them. Finally, I refer to the highest levels of music and their relation to the highest levels of virtue, where plurality and differentiation (in music and virtue) are finally absorbed in unity.

Chapter 22 examines music in more detail, considered as a theoretical science dealing with the relations (or proportions) between numbers. The ontological status of the objects studied in theoretical music (‘harmonics’) is described and the primary proportions (or intervals), identified as concords, are presented. The importance of music as providing models for subordinate sciences, in particular ethics and physics, is sketched.

In his Life of Isidore, Damascius, as I argue in Chapter 9, described the lives of a wide range of figures of his period as exemplifying to varying degrees success or failure in progress through the scale of virtues, thus providing an edificatory panorama of patterns of philosophical perfection, a panorama which could serve to inspire people beginning the study of philosophy. Many of these figures in Damascius’ account were able to achieve lives lived on the level of the political virtues, but few were able to attain higher levels of virtue and very few the highest levels. Yet these exceptional examples could also serve to inspire.

Chapter 1 takes the multiple biography published by Damascius, the last head of the school of Athens. In this biography, the Vita Isidori, Damascius describes the lives of many of the intellectuals of his time, including various rhetors. Among these rhetors he singles out some who, in his view, were not only virtuous, but also worthy to be called philosophers. Damascius therefore distinguished between good and bad rhetors, a distinction which I relate to the distinction between good and bad rhetoric which we can find it in the work of two Alexandrian philosophers of the fifth and sixth centuries, Hierocles and Olympiodorus: bad rhetoric caters to the base desires of the mob, whereas good rhetoric has a worthy moral purpose and is based on true knowledge. Damascius also notes variety in rhetorical skill, in particular the limitations of his own teacher Isidore in this regard.

In this chapter, names attested in the new edited ostraca from Gigthi and Assenamat are analysed from the point of view of Palaeo-Amazigh linguistics and in relation to the names of Bu Njem and of Roman Africa as a whole. Special attention is devoted to personal names of carriers involved in commercial exchanges as well as some measures that are unusual in Latin. These new contributions of onomastic material yield some personal names already documented in other regions of North Africa and add new names that can be analysed as Palaeo-Amazigh on phonological, morphological, lexematic, and semantic grounds. The linguistic analyses are put into the geohistorical, cultural, economic, and epigraphic contexts in which Tripolitanian ostraca were written. The study of measures portrays a depiction of Palaeo-Amazigh groups (Garamantes amongst them) as suppliers of grain and other crops cultivated in Phazania (Fazzān) and in northern Sahara to the Roman frontiers thanks, on the one hand, to sophisticated systems of water extraction whose true extent has only recently been revealed by archaeological prospection focused on hydraulic engineering and, on the other hand, to skin or leather bags used as containers for grain, water, and other supplies in Trans-Saharan transportation.

Alexander of Aphrodisias included Aristotle’s first principles of rational thinking, in particular the principle of non-contradiction, in the domain of metaphysics, as would Syrianus. In this chapter I discuss this principle as it was understood by Syrianus, in particular with regard to its roots in divine Intellect, where the unity of intellection and its objects grounds the principles of reasoning in human intellection and the truth of its objects.

Porphyry and Iamblichus added further levels of virtue to Plotinus’ scale of virtues. In Chapter 8 I discuss Iamblichus’ On the Pythagorean Life, which presents Pythagoras as a model of the political virtues. I show how, on this level, Iamblichus takes over Epicurean ideas about serenity, freedom from disturbance, a balanced control of desires and bodily needs and how, more generally, the Epicurean biographical practice of praising philosophical heroes as models to be imitated anticipates Iamblichus’ presentation of the figure of Pythagoras. I note also a wider use of Epicurean ethical ideas in Late Antique Platonism, in particular on the level of political virtues, the virtues of the discipline of bodily desires.

Chapter 10 explores the range of love in Plotinus, going from human earthly (including sexual) loves up to the One/Good as itself love. Plotinus takes over Plato’s interest in love and makes it into a feature of reality in general. Human love – the desire to unite with the beloved, the feeling of need – anticipates aspects of higher levels of love, soul’s love which brings it to union with transcendent Intellect, Intellect being itself love of the One. I discuss the special sense in which the One can be said to be love and self-love.

This chapter examines the so-called Hadrianus, a Latin prose text first published in 2010, which has the emperor Hadrian as its main character. The first part proposes some remarks concerning the content, literary genre, narrative form, language, and date of this pseudohistorical tale. The following section discusses some text-critical issues.

This contribution explores the presence of accents in the text of the Catilinarians preserved in the fourth-century CE Codex Miscellaneus of Montserrat. Starting from a general consideration of the sign in the Latin grammatical tradition, where it is closely linked to that of the apex, it moves to the particular analysis of each of the instances of the sign in the text, both from a material point of view and a philological, grammatical perspective. Whereas in fact some of them are proved to be not ink, but papyrus debris, and some others may be doubted as accents by reason of their shape, the remaining cases where an intention on the part of the scribe to write an acutus sign is clear point to a practical, non-erudite purpose for their presence. In accordance with the miscellaneous nature of the codex and its declared educational purposes, the presence of the signs seems to be connected with the earlier stages in Latin learning within the context of the hellenophone provinces of the East after Diocletian’s reforms.