During the palatial period there was a significant increase in the living standards of the Mycenaeans. The strengthening of certain rulers led to the kingship and, along with other various factors, to the creation of palaces, which were the economic and administrative centres characterized by feudal elements but mainly by a bureaucratic organization. Cyclopean walls assured protection and power. Greece was divided into hegemonies, each palace controlling apparently a large area. There was no subordination of the different regions to one powerful king. The ‘Catalogue of ships’ in the Iliad somehow reflects the topography of Mycenaean Greece. Commercial activities and seafaring developed significantly, taking advantage of neighbouring peaceful conditions. A network of contacts and interactions was created between areas previously closed to each other, like the Hittite kingdom. Cyprus, Egypt, the Near East and by the end of the period also with Italy, from where new weapons and burial customs arrived.

Shortly after the middle of the 13th century catastrophes occurred in Mycenaean centres; but the palaces were repaired, the fortifications reinforced, underground fountains built to ensure water supply. Yet by the end of the century – the beginning of the 12th – the whole Mediterranean was engulfed in a turmoil of raids, like those of the Sea Peoples, natural disasters, population movements and social unrest. The rich Near-Eastern cities and their network collapsed, the Hittite state dissolved, Cyprus and Troy were destroyed and Egypt entered a period of decline. In Greece the palaces were destroyed, the Mycenaean organization disappeared along with the writing, people fled to secure places. Internal factors and the dysfunction of the palace system are mainly the causes of the disasters. A short renaissance followed with small flourishing communities but new destructions brought complete disruption and final decay. The 1st millennium BC would herald the Iron Age based on new political circumstances and the use of the metal-iron-that changed peoples’ life. In many ways though the Mycenaean legacy was preserved.

The LH II period has no monumental architecture to exhibit, although a tendency to monumentality appears with the choice to build impressive tombs, and mansions like the Menelaion could claim to be ‘precursors’ of palaces. Chamber tombs - the most widespread - and tholoi, a typically Mycenaean structure, are the new types of burial. Nine tholoi in Mycenae present a noteworthy technical and decorative evolution, the perfect example being the ‘Treasury of Atreus’. The partly unlooted tholos tomb at Vapheio, Laconia, produced extraordinary finds, including the famous gold cups depicting capture of bulls. Synchronous with Vapheio is the celebrated stone-built cist grave of the ‘Griffin Warrior’ found in Pylos with similar unique finds. The art of the period detected through grave goods displays richness, variety of materials and impeccable execution showing a strong Minoan influence. Minoan and Mycenaean elements intertwine creating an eclectic and mixed style illustrated masterly in the signet rings.

This chapter attempts to reconstruct the early history of the ala Apriana, a cavalry unit present in Egypt from the Julio-Claudian period, and of early auxiliary units of the Roman army in Egypt, on the basis of Latin and Greek documentary papyri. It then looks at Claudius’ reorganisation of permanent alae with standardised names, and investigates the identity and role of Aper, the first eponymous commander of the ala Apriana, suggesting an identification with the Gaulish orator Marcus Aper, Tacitus’ teacher and a speaker in the Dialogus de oratoribus.

‘Economics’, i.e., household ethics, was included in the Late Antique ladder of sciences as a branch of practical philosophy. In Chapter 13, a preliminary sketch is proposed of this science, its topics and the authoritative texts to be used in its study. Comparing some chapters of Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus and of Marinus’ Life of Proclus, I show how in these texts Plotinus and Proclus exhibit exemplary practice in household ethics and how Marinus’ portrait of Proclus attempts to show his superiority in comparison with Porphyry’s portrait of Plotinus. I also indicate further texts where more material can be found concerning Late Antique Platonist household ethics.

The use of Latin alongside Greek in Roman soldiers’ private documents on papyrus or tablet has already been approached by modern scholarship. However, new evidence allows a further exploration of this topic and a reassessment of some of the results reached so far. Therefore, this chapter investigates three case studies based on this new evidence: the use of the tribal designation, the use of Latin in marriage agreements, and the use of Latin in Roman testaments. The following questions are addressed: What kind of Latin did Roman soldiers and veterans use? Under what circumstances? And why? What can we learn from new evidence? Does it strengthen or challenge traditional hypotheses? The investigation contributes to our understanding of the significance of written documentation in the daily lives of Roman soldiers and veterans and of the usages of the Latin language, script, or culture in their private documents. The new evidence considered sometimes strengthens and at other times challenges traditional hypotheses, showing how complex the relationship was between the Latin and Greek languages, scripts, and cultures in the Graeco-Roman eras.

This chapter discusses the use of Greek in the Roman judicial system. First, it considers the general question of the role of Latin as an official language of the judicial administration and the permission given to judges to deliver officially their sentences in Greek, at least from the end of the fourth century CE. Secondly, it uses papyrological sources (mostly records of court proceedings on papyrus) to examine traces of the use of Greek in trials before 396 CE. To shed more light on this issue, two reports on papyrus from Kellis are examined: these fourth-century documents provide further evidence of the use of official translations in the judicial system and the fees charged for their production. Furthermore, the analysis of a court record from the Viennese collection may offer additional elements to our knowledge of the subject.

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.