Chapter 24: the theme of the harmony of the spheres appears already in Plato and is criticized (as a Pythagorean theory) in Aristotle: if there is such a harmony, why is it that we do not hear it? Despite Aristotle’s criticism, various attempts were made in Antiquity to provide an answer to the question. In Chapter 24 I present an answer to be found in Simplicius which, I argue, goes back to Iamblichus: Pythagoras alone can hear the celestial harmony, whereas we in general cannot; this is because Pythagoras has a faculty corresponding to and able to sense this harmony, an astral vehicle of the soul which is pure, as compared to the impure accretions our souls accumulate in our descent to the body and which prevent us from hearing the celestial music. I describe this music, how Pythagoras educated himself in hearing it and how he composed audible music imaging it for the moral education of his followers.

Two papyri dated to the fourth and fifth centuries (P.Vindob. inv. L 103 and P.Oxy. XXIV 2401), prior to the Bembinus codex, transmit the earliest critical edition, corrected and annotated, of Terence: 162 verses from the Andria, that is to say 2.6 per cent of the whole of Terence’s theatrical corpus. This modest papyrological corpus, which is part of a tradition of ancient ecdotics, nourished by several centuries of exegesis, proves to be rich in information: on the text itself and its variants, as well as on its context of use, in a Greek-speaking environment, and for educational purpose. The theatrical, prosodic, and metrical dimensions of the text have been completely ignored in favour of a grammatical approach. Terence has not been performed on stage for a long time; he has become a canonical author of reference for the training of the elite of the Roman Empire, widely used by grammarians and commentators. The two papyri thus have their rightful place in the history of the Latin grammatical tradition, just as they do in the exegetical tradition.

This chapter offers a re-examination of P.Ital. 1 (445–6 CE), the well-known documentary dossier on the Sicilian properties of Lauricius, praepositus sacri cubiculi. More precisely, it aims to propose a new interpretation of a formula in the document 2013 ante barbarico fisco praestabatur – which, according to most scholars, starting with Theodor Mommsen, alludes to the existence of a fiscus barbaricus, a special treasury of the empire intended to collect taxes for the sustenance of non-Roman (i.e. barbarian) troops. The structure of the documents that make up the dossier, and the linguistic variations in the texts, suggest that the formula in question does not refer to a fiscus barbaricus, but rather to the fiscus, i.e. the imperial treasury, on the one hand, and to the barbaricum, i.e. the upheavals in Sicily due to the Vandal incursions in the Mediterranean, on the other.

This chapter presents a survey of the interpunction and abbreviation devices in Latin documents (papyri, ostraca, and tablets) between the first century BCE and the seventh CE, with a focus on the Roman East. The signs are described and catalogued according to their chronological range, the textual typology, and the letter(s) they are associated with. It discusses the origin and the scope of signs; the possible connection with other graphic systems; the influence of bureaucratic standardisation; and the degree of custom and personal taste beyond abbreviating choices. It emerges how the common ancestral punctuation and abbreviation marks in Roman culture, the interpunctum and the titulus, became obsolete or were seldom represented in documentary evidence outside stone from the first century of the Empire; they were finally overtaken by different signs – the high dot, the short oblique stroke – which in turn dwindled to nothing at the dawn of Late Antiquity, when the new generation of bureaucrats started employing the so-called long oblique stroke and the flourish. Any attempt at explaining the origin and reciprocal relationship of these signs must collide with the scarcity of the evidence and its concentration in very specific areas.

Chapter 4 discusses the protreptic structure of Iamblichus’ De communi mathematica scientia and of Proclus’ revision of this text in the First Prologue to his commentary on Euclid’s Elements. I note rhetorical patterns and styles of argumentation used by Iamblichus, which mean, for example, that the same arguments can be made both in support of the study of philosophy (in the Protrepticus) and in support of the study of mathematics (in the De communi mathematica scientia). I note Proclus’ use of Syrianus’ commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics in his revision of Iamblichus’ book and suggest that Iamblichus may have been influenced by the prolegomena of Ptolemy’s Syntaxis.

The classified glossaries of the Hermeneumata Pseudodositheana, preserved by medieval manuscripts in many different versions, are also transmitted in numerous papyri, some as early as the first/second century CE. This piece examines the relationship of the papyri to the medieval versions, showing that different papyri are related to different medieval versions and that therefore at least four of those versions had already diverged from one another in antiquity. Surprisingly, one of those four is the Celtis glossary (Vienna suppl. Gr. 43), whose ‘medieval’ attestation is so late as really to be from the Renaissance. Further investigation shows that the papyrus related to Celtis (CLTP III.11 = P.Stras. inv. Gr. 1173) is not a direct ancestor of the Celtis glossary as it appears in the Renaissance manuscript; the Celtis glossary must therefore be older than this papyrus, which was copied in the third or fourth century CE. And since the papyrus’ transliteration (the Latin is in Greek script) probably dates to the first/second century, the Celtis glossary probably goes back at least that far – and it is possible that the Renaissance version is a retransliteration of one that circulated with Latin in Greek script.

The study of papyrus evidence can help us to a better understanding not only of the thinking of the great jurists of the first three centuries CE, but also of those who, in the ‘dark’ centuries that followed, studied and transmitted ‘jurisprudential’ law up to Justinian and beyond. The author proposes some considerations based on two papyri. The first is P.Oxy. LXXXV 5495, which contains the Greek translation and paraphrase of some rubrics of Justinian’s Digesta. In particular, the author dwells on some lines of the so-called successio auctorum of the enchiridion of Sextus Pomponius. The other papyrus dates to the end of the third/beginning of the fourth century CE: it is P.Haun. de legatis et fideicommissis, in which the opinions of several jurists on intricate questions concerning the law of succession are recorded. The style in argumentation of the anonymous author suggests that this text may be considered an important testimony to the transition between the creative jurisprudence of the early centuries CE and the legal world of Late Antiquity.

Chapter 5 explores some relations between rhetorical models for speeches in praise of the gods and Platonist texts relating to metaphysics, or ‘theology’, the science of divine first principles. As rhetoric distinguishes different modes and styles in discourse about the gods, so do the Platonists, both in their own works and in those of their ancient authorities (Pythagoras and Plato), distinguish in corresponding ways between different modes of teaching in theology. And as rhetoric prescribes, for speeches about the gods, genealogies of the gods, their actions and benefactions, so too do Platonist theological texts expound the metaphysical genealogy of first principles, a hierarchy of causes and their effects. But speech expresses the limitations of human souls: to approach what is divine and transcendent, which is ineffable, is to be silent, to practice the silence of Pythagoras and of Socrates.

Chapter 25 introduces Alexander of Aphrodisias’ systematic reading of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. I show how Syrianus took over Alexander’s reading of Aristotle, combining it with Plato’s references to a supreme knowledge, ‘dialectic’, and explaining the possibility of scientific knowledge of the objects of metaphysics – transcendent divine first principles – in terms of concepts innate in the soul which both image these first principles and are available to discursive reasoning as sources of knowledge of these principles. The primary text for metaphysics, according to the Platonists, was Plato’s Parmenides. I show how Proclus’ interpretation of the Parmenides, inspired by Syrianus, underlies the composition of Proclus’ metaphysical masterpiece, the Elements of Theology. Finally, Damascius is shown to have brought out to the fullest extent the limits of human reasonings about transcendent divine principles, reasonings which incessantly lead to contradictions and impasses, the aporetical ‘birth-pangs’ of the reasoning soul where it meets what transcend it.

Olympiodorus provided his students in Alexandria in the sixth century with a handy summary of political science which I discuss and develop in Chapter 14. The following themes are introduced: the domain of political science (the realm of praxis, the life of soul in the material world, in the state or city, where political science directs other subordinate expertises); law (the primacy of law in an ideal city for humans); practical wisdom (its use of theoretical wisdom and difference from it); the goal (‘political’ happiness, involving the political virtues and preparing for a higher life); earthly and heavenly cities; the place of the philosopher in the city; Platonist texts concerning political science.

Virgilian centos are school products; therefore it is highly probable that the portions of verses reused in them reflect more closely the text of Virgil circulating in schools and testified by some papyrus finds than the text of the oldest Virgilian manuscripts which were made to adorn the libraries of aristocratic families of Late Antiquity. The chapter investigates the osmotic relationship between Virgilian centos and Virgilian papyri, with its multiple implications, considering some significant case studies.

A fair number of Greek texts written in shorthand are preserved from the first to the seventh century from Egypt and in particular from Antinoopolis: copies of the tachygraphic manual, glossaries, syllabaries, and also annotations on the margins of literary texts. The situation for the same period concerning the evidence of the Latin shorthand is quite different: the texts in notae are extremely few in number, and they come from different and distant parts of the late Roman Empire, are written on various material supports, differing in form, length, and content, and among the direct attestations of Latin tachygraphy there is nothing comparable to the Greek tachygraphic commentaries. On this basis the chapter argues for the need to move beyond the classifications proposed by the greatest innovator in this field, Arthur Mentz, posing questions that have not yet been asked and seeking answers from a variety of elements and remarks that have not been involved so far in the investigation of the remains of the Latin shorthand from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, which represents the most problematic and crucial period for Latin palaeographers.

In Chapter 7 I discuss the consequences, as regards the theory of virtue, of Plotinus’ denial that ‘spirit’ (thumos) and ‘desire’ (epithumia) are parts of the nature of soul. This denial contrasts with Plato’s tripartition of the soul (which includes spirit and desire) in the Republic, where the tripartition serves to define the four cardinal virtues. However, Plotinus defines these ‘political’ virtues in a different way, as the knowledge and the measure and order brought by rational soul to the affects which arise in the living body. Plotinus introduces furthermore a higher level of virtues, the ‘greater’ virtues. I discuss the relation between these two levels of virtue, in particular as regards the nature of this scale. I argue that in Plotinus the lower (‘political’) virtues are imperfect if possessed without the greater virtues