This chapter takes as its starting point the historiographical aspects of the editio princeps of the two papyri BGU II 611 and 628 and then sets out to investigate the legal profiles of the measures reproduced in them, both relating to judicial reforms carried out during the age of Claudius and later Nero. This investigation also allows us to make some considerations on the relationship between senatusconsulta and normative measures of the imperial chancellery.

One of the results of the PLATINUM Project was a re-evaluation of P.Mich. VII 430, a document dating to shortly before 115/116 CE, described by previous editors as ‘a collection of brief sayings’. Several of the textual remains are consistent with trochaic septenarii, a metre found in early Latin drama and significantly within the tradition of Latin verse maxims attributed to the late Republican poet Publilius the Syrian. This chapter discusses the content of the collection and compares it with other Latin gnomic collections that survive in medieval transmission, including Publilius, and several ancient gnomic collections ascribed to Seneca, Varro, and ‘Caecilius Balbus’.

This study examines the text and vocabulary of two fragments originating from the same first-century scroll. These fragments provide the earliest known example of Latin technical literature found in Egypt, encompassing topics such as cooking recipes, viticultural practices, and wine-based medicinal formulations.

Why are states evil? In Chapter 17 I approach this question in relation to Plato’s analogy between soul and city, as this analogy was interpreted by Platonists in Late Antiquity. I indicate first that individual souls belong originally, according to the Platonists, to a transcendent, intelligible community, a city of souls where they enjoy an ‘intelligible love’, a ‘divine friendship’. However, souls, in their presence in the material world, can become alienated by this world, alienated from their original community and from each other. I show that a relation is made between Plato’s account of successive stages of degradation in political constitutions in the Republic Books VIII and IX and stages of moral alienation in souls. Corrupt souls produce corrupt states and corrupt states can corrupt souls.

The Introduction describes the curriculum of sciences taught in the Neoplatonist schools of Late Antiquity and the purpose of this curriculum as a divinization of the human soul. The textbooks which were read as part of the curriculum are identified, the image of a ‘ladder’ of the sciences is introduced and disagreements about the division of the sciences are indicated. The second part of the Introduction provides an overview of, and context for, the following chapters, organized in five parts: rhetoric (not as part of the curriculum, but as an instrument of philosophy), ethics, politics, mathematics, metaphysics. The arrangement of the chapters within each of the five parts is presented and the main themes of each chapter are introduced.

BL 3124 (TM 397934) is a, so far, unique papyrus containing a bilingual, ‘Latin’–Arabic, private letter entirely written in Latin script. The first six lines of the letter itself are in a form of Late Latin/Proto-Romance, while the rest of the text is in Arabic. The first editors dated this document between the end of the seventh and the ninth century and considered it as possible evidence for the existence of Latin-speaking communities in the Near East at the time. This chapter shows that important linguistic and palaeographical features of the letter link both the language of its ‘Latin’ section and its script to Italy and argues that it provides a potential very early document of the evolution of Italian vernacular, as well as suggesting connections between the peninsula and the Near East in this period.

The recto of Hamburg papyrus II 167, dated to the late first century CE, presents an intriguing case study of a text that has so far resisted generic classification. Rhetorical declamation and theatre (fabula togata/mime) are the two literary categories for which scholars have argued most strongly in their attempt to explain the papyrus and understand the story it presents – a conversation between characters with historically attested names involving a journey and family-related motifs, such as a husband’s faithlessness, a father-in-law, and a restored marital relationship: the text gives the impression of a ‘theatricalised’ novelistic tale. The difficulty in reaching consensus on the matter is only partly due to the lacunose state of the papyrus. This chapter favours the interpretation of the text as a theatrical script (an extract from a mime, perhaps written in prose, rather than a fragment from a literary fabula togata), but also points out the unique (dramaturgical, lexical, thematic, and visual) features of the text that challenge our assumptions about viewing Latin theatrical genres as forms of entertainment with fixed and rigid boundaries and about imagining how Latin literature was performed and circulated in antiquity.

Chapter 15 compares the personifications of philosophy which we find in Synesius’ De regno and in Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy. I describe the relationship between philosophy and politics, as presented by Synesius, as ‘tense’. Synesius, ambassador for Cyrene at the court of Constantinople at the beginning of the fifth century (and later bishop of Cyrene), asserts the superiority and independence of true philosophy in relation to politics, while asserting the advantages that philosophy can bring to politics. Boethius, a high-ranking Roman official awaiting his execution in 524, is consoled by Philosophy; his mission to bring philosophy and rulership together was not in vain. I mention three factors which can limit the intervention of philosophy in the political sphere.

Proclus did not accept Plotinus’ position that matter is absolute evil and responsible for other evils. I return to his position in Chapter 12, as it is followed by Simplicius in explaining the evils of his period, the reign of the Emperor Justinian, a period which was afflicted by a series of natural catastrophes (earthquakes, fires, the plague) and human disasters (military, social, economic). Natural disasters, Simplicius explained, are part of the compensatory balance of forces of the natural world and are not evil, as such; human moral evil can be of benefit to those who suffer it. I contrast this account of evil with that given by a contemporary, Procopius of Caesarea, who explains the same evils of his time in terms of the Justinian’s demonic nature.

This chapter attempts to reconstruct the textual history of the Latin–Greek glossary known as Hermeneumata Celtis, from antiquity to the year 1495, when the Humanist Conrad Celtis transcribed the work from a medieval antigraph that was subsequently lost. The thematic glossary of Hermeneumata Celtis is unique among other extant bilingual glossaries because it was supplemented, at some time in Late Antiquity, with the inclusion of Greek words and definitions culled from a Greek alphabetical lexicon similar to Hesychius (but possibly earlier). Other increments came from contamination with other thematic glossaries; the most recognisable points of contact are with what modern scholars call the Hermeneumata Montepessulana.

Chapter 18 introduces the theory of natural law to be found in Plotinus and in Proclus in connection with the interpretation of Plato’s Timaeus. Natural law derives from the ‘law of being’ which is divine Intellect and from souls which, in their nature, are laws unto themselves (autonomous). Divine and natural law are considered as paradigmatic for human law. I explore this relationship as it is presented in Proclus and as exemplified in the idea of rulership for women. Appropriate knowledge in metaphysics and physics is required of the legislator in formulating corresponding human law.