¹ On the phrase τοιοῦτος ὤν meaning ‘since that is what I am’, see BDAG 1009 s.v. τοιοῦτος 2b: ‘since I am the sort of person’; cf. Eduard Lohse, Colossians and Philemon: A Commentary on the Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971) 199 n. 15. On the particle ὡς before a proper name, see BDAG s.v. ὡς III: ‘ὡς introduces the characteristic quality of a person…referred to in the context’; cf. the letter of Theoninus to Didymus in P. Flor. 367.5–6 (3^rd century ce): ἀλλ᾽ [ἐπι]στέλλω ὡς Θεωνεῖνος πάλιν Δ[ιδύ]μῳ, cited in Peter Arzt-Grabner, Philemon (Papyrologische Kommentare zu Neuen Testament 1; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003) 201. The phrase νυνὶ δὲ καί is ascensive (‘and now also’) rather than contrastive (‘but now also’).

² Theodoret, Interpretatio Epist. ad Philemonem 714, J.-P. Migne, Patrologiae Graeca 82:873: Προστέθεικε δὲ καὶ τὸν πρεσβύτην, ἐπιδεικνὺς πολιὰν ἐν πόνοις βλαστήσασαν, καὶ ταύτῃ τὸν λόγον ἀξιοπιστότερον ἐργαζόμενος…Αἰδέσθητι Παῦλον, αἰδέσθητι μου τὸ γῆρας (‘He even added “the aged” to point out the gray hairs brought forth by his labors, and in this way gives his argument more credibility…Show regard for Paul; show regard for my old age’); (trans. Misty S. Irons, James T. Dennison, Catherine T. Drown and Lee Irons, ‘Theodoret of Cyrhus; The Epistle of Paul to Philemon’, WTJ 61 (1999)) 111–17, at 115.

³ Ronald F. Hock, ‘A Support for His Old Age: Paul’s Plea on Behalf of Onesimus’, The Social World of the First Christians (ed. L. Michael White and O. Larry Yarbrough; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995) 67–81, at 81.

⁴ Thomas M. Falkner, The Poetics of Old Age in Greek Epic, Lyric, and Tragedy (Oklahoma Series in Classical Culture; Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995); Mary Harlow and Ray Laurence, Growing Up and Growing Old in Ancient Rome (London: Routledge, 2002); Karen Cokayne, Experiencing Old Age in Ancient Rome (London: Routledge, 2003); Tim G. Parkin, Old Age in the Roman World: A Cultural and Social History (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003); Mary Harlow and Ray Laurence, Age and Ageing in the Roman Empire (Portsmouth: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2007); On Old Age: Approaching Death in Antiquity (ed. Christian Krötzl and Katarina Mustakallio; Tournhout: Brepols, 2011); Haim Weiss and Mira Balberg, When Near Becomes Far: Old Age in Rabbinic Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021); Mary Harlow and Lena Larsson Lovén, Age, Ages and Ageing in the Greco-Roman World (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2022).

⁵ Abraham J. Malherbe, ‘Paulus senex’, Restoration Quarterly 36 (1994) 197–207; idem, ‘How to Treat Old Women and Old Men: The Use of Philosophical Traditions and Scripture in 1 Timothy 5’, Scripture and Traditions (ed. Patrick Gray and Gail R. O’Day; Leiden: Brill, 2008) 263–90; James R. Harrison, ‘Two Approaches to Ageing in Antiquity: Comparing Cicero’s De Senectute and Paul’s Intergenerational Relationships in Philemon and 1 Timothy’, Embracing Life and Gathering Wisdom: Theological, Pastoral and Clinical Insights into Human Flourishing at the End of Life (ed. Stephen Smith, Edwina Blair and Catherine Kleemann; Macquarie Park: SCD Press, 2020) 247–74; Mona Tokarek Lafosse, Honouring Age: The Social Dynamics of Age Structure in 1 Timothy (Studies in Christianity and Judaism; Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023).

⁶ So, already, C. J. Ellicott, A Critical and Grammatical Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistles to the Philippians, Colossians, and to Philemon (Andover: Draper, 1872) 223; H. A. W. Meyer, Kritisch exegetisches Handbuch über die Briefe Pauli an die Philipper, Kolosser und an Philemon (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1886) 528.

⁷ Johannis Calvini in omnes Novi Testamenti epistolas commentarii (Vol. 2; ed. A. Tholuck; Halle, 1834²) 369.

⁸ Op. cit.

⁹ Bentleii Critica Sacra (ed. Arthur Ayres Ellis; Cambridge: Deighton, Bel, and Co., 1862) 73. Bentley’s emendation was accepted by Brooke Foss Westcott and Fenton John Anthony Hort, The New Testament in the Original Greek (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1881) and appears in the apparatus criticus of the 27^th edition of Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1993).

¹⁰ Op. cit. Bentley dated the stoning of Stephen to ad 35 and the writing of Philemon to ad 62, without providing justification for the dates in either case.

¹¹ J. B. Lightfoot, Saint Paul’s Epistles to the Colossians and Philemon (London: Macmillan, 1879) 336–7.

¹² Lightfoot, Philemon, 336.

¹³ Op. cit.

¹⁴ Op. cit.

¹⁵ Lightfoot, Philemon, 337.

¹⁶ Lightfoot, Philemon, 336.

¹⁷ Lightfoot, Philemon, 337.

¹⁸ Among commentators who favour the meaning ‘ambassador’, see Erich Haupt, Die Gefangenschaftsbriefe (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1902) 188–9; Ernst Lohmeyer, Die Briefe an die Philipper, an die Kolosser und an Philemon (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1953) 185; C. F. D. Moule, The Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Colossians and to Philemon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957) 144; Ralph P. Martin, Colossians and Philemon (London: Oliphants, 1974) 144, 163; Josef Ernst, Die Briefe an die Philipper, an Philemon, an die Kolosser, an die Epheser (Regensburg: Pustet, 1974) 133–4; Alfred Suhl, Der Brief an Philemon (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1981) 31; Peter T. O’Brien, Colossians, Philemon: Colossians and Philemon (Vol 44; World Biblical Commentary; Waco: Word, 1982) 289–90; F. F. Bruce, The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the Ephesians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984) 212; Markus Barth and Helmut Blanke, The Letter to Philemon (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000) 321–3; N. T. Wright, Colossians and Philemon: An Introduction and Commentary (vol 12; TNTC; Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2008) 277–80; Murray J. Harris, Colossians and Philemon (Nashville: B & H Academic, 2010) 260. Among studies arguing for the translation ‘ambassador’, see Ulrich Wickert, ‘Der Philemonbrief – Privatbrief oder apostolisches Schreiben?’, ZNW 52 (1961) 230–8, at 235; C. J. Bjerkelund, ΠΑΡΑΚΑΛΩ: Form, Funktion und Sinn der ΠΑΡΑΚΑΛΩ-Sätze in den paulinischen Briefen (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1967) 119–20; F. F. Church, ‘Rhetorical Structure and Design in Paul’s Letter to Philemon’, HTR 71 (1978) 17–33, at 25; Norman R. Petersen, Rediscovering Paul: Philemon and the Sociology of Paul’s Narrative World (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985) 125–8; J. D. M. Derrett, ‘The Function of the Epistle to Philemon’, ZNW 79 (1988) 63–91, at 86–7.

¹⁹ Lohmeyer, Philemon, 185; Moule, Philemon, 144; Martin, Philemon, 163; Ernst, Philemon, 133; O’Brien, Philemon, 290; Bruce, Philemon, 212; Barth and Blanke, Philemon, 323; Wright, Philemon, 277.

²⁰ Lohmeyer, Philemon, 185; similarly, Bruce, Philemon, 212; Barth and Blanke, Philemon, 323.

²¹ Wickert, ‘Der Philemonbrief’, 233, 235; followed by Bjerkelund, ΠΑΡΑΚΑΛΩ, 210 n. 3; Church, ‘Rhetorical Structure’, 25 n. 41.

²² Petersen, Rediscovering Paul, 126.

²³ Petersen, Rediscovering Paul, 127.

²⁴ Bruce, Philemon, 212.

²⁵ Barth and Blanke, Philemon, 322–3.

²⁶ In addition to Theodoret, Interpretatio Epist. ad Philemonem 714 in J.-P. Migne, Patrologiae Graeca 82:873 (cited in n. 2 above), see John Chrysostom Hom. II in Epist. ad Philemonem in J.-P. Migne, Patrologiae Graeca 62: ‘Τοιοῦτος ὢν, φησὶν, ὡς Παῦλος πρεσβύτης.’ Βαβαὶ πόσα δυσωπητκά; Παῦλος, ἀπὸ τῆς ποιότητος τοῦ προσώπου˙ ἀπὸ τῆς ἡλικίας, ὅτι πρεσβύτης˙ ἀπὸ τοῦ δικαιοτέρου πάντων, ὅτι καὶ, ‘δέσμιος Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ’. (‘Being such a one,’ he says, ‘as Paul an old man.’ Remarkable! How many importunate things! Paul, from the quality of his person, from his age, because he was old, and from what is more just than all, ‘a prisoner of Jesus Christ’).

²⁷ Favouring the translation of πρεσβύτης as ‘old man’, Marvin R. Vincent, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistles to the Philippians and to Philemon (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1897) 184; Martin Dibelius and Heinrich Greeven, An die Kolosser, Epheser, an Philemon (HNT 12; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1953) 104–5; Gerhard Friedrich, Die kleineren Briefe des Apostels Paulus. Der Brief an Philemon (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1965) 193; Günther Bornkamm, ‘πρεσβύτης’, TDNT 6 (1968) 683; Eduard Lohse, Colossians and Philemon: A Commentary on the Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971) 199; Peter Stuhlmacher, Der Brief an Philemon (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1975) 37–8; Joachim Gnilka, Der Philemonbrief (HThKNT 10/4; Freiburg: Herder, 1982) 43; Wolfgang Schenk, ‘Der Brief des Paulus an Philemon in der neueren Forschung (1945-1987)’, ANRW 2.25.4 (1987) 3439–95, at 3463; Michael Wolter, Der Brief an die Kolosser / Der Brief an Philemon (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1993) 260; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Letter to Philemon: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000) 105; Arzt-Grabner, Philemon, 76–7; Douglas Moo, The Letters to the Colossians and to Philemon (PNTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008) 404–6; James D. G. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014) 327.

²⁸ Lohse, Philemon, 199.

²⁹ Fitzmyer, Philemon, 105.

³⁰ Only three commentators in the last twenty-five years favour the translation ‘ambassador’: Harris, Colossians and Philemon, 260; Barth and Blanke, Philemon, 322–4; Wright, Colossians and Philemon, 277–80.

³¹ As in the RSV.

³² The Vg. has senex.

³³ J. N. Birdsall, ‘ΠΡΕΣΒΥΤΗΣ in Philemon 9: A Study in Conjectural Emendation’, NTS 39 (1993) 625–30, at 627, drawing upon the data accumulated and codified by Karl Dieterich, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der griechischen Sprache von der hellenistischen Zeit bis zum 10. Jahr. N. Chr. (Leipzig: Teubner, 1898); Stylianos G. Kapsomenakis, Voruntersuchungen zu einer Grammatik der Papyri der nachchristlichen Zeit (München: C. H. Beck, 1938); Francis Thomas Gignac, A Grammar of the Greek Papyri of the Roman and Byzantine Periods I: Phonology (Milano: Instituto Editoriale Cisalpino, 1975).

³⁴ P.Berlin 10581, cited in Karl Bihlmeyer, Die apostolischen Väter (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1956) 109.

³⁵ As suggested by Henry St. John Thackeray, A Grammar of the Old Testament in Greek I: Introduction, Orthography and Accidence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1909) 97.

³⁶ Birdsall, ‘ΠΡΕΣΒΥΤΗΣ in Philemon 9’, 628.

³⁷ Similarly, Birdsall, ‘ΠΡΕΣΒΥΤΗΣ in Philemon 9’, 628.

³⁸ Parkin, Old Age in the Roman World, 16–18.

³⁹ Tim G. Parkin, ‘Ageing in Antiquity: Status and Participation’, Old Age from Antiquity to Post-Modernity (ed. Paul Johnson and Patricia Thane; London: Routledge, 1998) 19–42, at 21.

⁴⁰ Cokayne, Experiencing Old Age in Ancient Rome, 1, 180, referencing Ovid Met. 15.199–213 (senex, from the age of 60); Digest (Ulpian) 16.3; Cod. Iust. 5.4.27; Plautus Merc. 1015 ff.; Terence Ad. 938 ff. See also Weiss and Balberg, When Near Becomes Far, 12–13: ‘Strictly speaking, the rabbis did have an established chronological criterion for when old age begins, and they determined that this age was sixty. Seventy was considered extreme old age, and one who lived to be seventy was seen as having lived a full life’, referencing M. Avot 5.21 and PT Bikkurim 2.1, 64c.

⁴¹ Philo De spec. leg. 2.33.

⁴² Philo De opif. 105, quoting Ps.-Hippocrates De hebdomadibus.

⁴³ On ancient divisions of the human life-cycle generally, see Emiel Eyben, ‘Die Einteilung des menschlichen Lebens in römischen Altertum’, Rheinisches Museum 116 (1973) 150–90; Parkin, Old Age in the Roman World, 15–35.

⁴⁴ Ptolemy Tetr. 4.10.203–7.

⁴⁵ Cited in J. H. Moulton and G. Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament Illustrated from the Papyri and Other Non-Literary Sources (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1930) 535 s.v. πρεσβύτης; Arzt-Grabner, Philemon, 77.

⁴⁶ Keith Hopkins, ‘On the Probable Age Structure of the Roman Population’, Population Studies 20 (1966) 245–64; Bruce W. Frier, ‘Roman Life Expectancy: Ulpian’s Evidence’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 86 (1982) 213–51; Tim G. Parkin, Demography and Roman Society (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992); Richard Saller, Patriarchy, Property and Death in the Roman Family (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) 9–69. All the data for mortality and demographic structure in the Greco-Roman world are problematic to some degree, because the sources from which the data are derived – Ulpian’s ‘life table’ (Digest 35.2.68), tombstone inscriptions, skel-etal remains, census returns from Roman Egypt, etc. – are tendentious, commemorative, unrepresentative and self-reported: see Keith Hopkins, ‘Graveyard for Historians’, La mort, les morts et l’au-delà dans le monde romain (ed. Francois Hinard; Caen: Centre de Publications, 1987) 113–26; Parkin, Demography and Roman Society, 27–41. For life expectancy at birth averaged at twenty-five, Parkin, Saller and others utilise the model life tables of A. J. Coale and P. Demeny, Regional Model Life Tables and Stable Populations (New York: Academic Press, 1983), esp. Table Level 3 West.

⁴⁷ On the calculation of infant mortality rates, see Parkin, Demography and Roman Society, 92–111; Saller, Patriarchy, Property and Death in the Roman World, 12: ‘In a population with an average life expectancy at birth of twenty-five, the most common age at death will be under one year.’

⁴⁸ Walter Scheidel, ‘Roman Age Structure: Evidence and Models’, Journal of Roman Studies 91 (2001) 1–26. Evidence from cemeteries in the vicinity of Rome, notably on the Isola Sacra, suggests that few people lived to age fifty: A. Sperduti, I resti scheletrici umani della necropoli di età romana-imperiale di Isola Sacra (I-III sec. d.C.): analisi paleodemografica (Rome: PhD diss., 1995).

⁴⁹ Peter Garnsey, Famine and Food Supply in the Graeco-Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

⁵⁰ A. Scobie, ‘Slums, Sanitation, and Mortality in the Roman World’, Klio 68 (1986) 399–433; Walter Scheidel, Death on the Nile: Death and Disease in Roman Egypt (Leiden: Brill, 2001) 118–80.

⁵¹ E.g., the elder Cato, who lived to be eighty-five, according to Cicero Brut. 20.80 and Valerius Maximus 8.7.1 For a list of aged individuals encountered in the literary and historical record of antiquity, see Parkin, Old Age in the Roman World, 43–6 and at http://www.clas.canterbury.ac.nz/oldancients.html.

⁵² Parkin, Old Age in the Roman World, 36–56, 280, Table 3; Saller, Patriarchy, Property and Death, 22–5.

⁵³ Cokayne, Experiencing Old Age in Ancient Rome, 2; Weiss and Balberg, When Near Becomes Far, 11–12; Robert N. Butler, ‘The Façade of Chronological Age: An Interpretive Summary’, American Journal of Psychiatry 119 (1963) 721–8; Haim Hazan, Against Hybridity: Social Impasses in a Globalizing World (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2015) 46–55.

⁵⁴ Gulielmus Estius, In Omnes Pauli Epistolas (vol. 5; ed, Francisus Sausen; Paris/ London, 1843) 412.

⁵⁵ In the history of research, this passage is treated as an example of a ‘peristasis catalogue’, such as one finds in 1 Cor 4.9–13 and 2 Cor 4.8–9; see John T. Fitzgerald, Cracks in an Earthen Vessel: An Examination of the Catalogues of Hardships in the Corinthian Correspondence (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988) 7–31. Anton Fridrichsen sought the origin of Paul’s catalogue of hardships in 2 Cor. 11.23b–27 in paradoxical imitation of the lists of achievements and services compiled by notable public figures, such as the res gestae of the emperor Augustus (‘Zum Stil des paulinischen Peristasenkatalogs 2 Cor. 11:23ff.’, SO 8 (1929) 78–82). While this suggestion illuminates features of the style and content of 2 Cor 11.23–5, the reality of the hardships and the implications for Paul’s process of ageing remain to be appreciated. Hans Windisch (Der zweite Korintherbrief (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1924) 354) observed: ‘Paulus gibt konkrete biographische Daten, die nur teilweise in der Apostelgeschichte belegt sind.’ Indeed, Windisch calculated that Paul ultimately received 195 lashes! (355). See, further, Jennifer A. Glancy, ‘Boasting of Beatings (2 Corinthians 11:23-25)’, JBL 123 (2004) 99–135, who argues that Paul does not represent his endurance of beatings as heroic but evokes the abject habitus of a beaten slave or criminal.

⁵⁶ M. I. Finley, ‘The Elderly in Classical Antiquity’, Greece & Rome 28 (1981) 156–71, at 165, referencing the central thesis of Simone de Beauvoir’s book Old Age (London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1972) 10.

⁵⁷ Cicero De sen. 3.8.

⁵⁸ The extremity of the language has puzzled interpreters and has sometimes been explained by reference to Paul’s emotional state (so Johannes Weiss, Der erste Korintherbrief (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1910) 112, who speaks of ‘Bitterkeit’ resulting from Paul’s adverse experiences), or his rhetorical purposes (so Karl Plank, Paul and the Irony of Affliction (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987) 33–69, who characterises the language as ‘ironic hyperbole’, and Margaret M. Mitchell, Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation: An Exegetical Investigation of the Language and Composition of 1 Corinthians (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1991) 220–1, who regards the passage as a ‘paradoxical encomium’). Other interpreters soften the impression produced by these verses by suggesting that they constitute a brief catalogue of hardships, such as philosophers employed to depict the adversities faced by the lover of virtue, and that the vocabulary is, therefore, conventional (so Robert Hodgson, ‘Paul the Apostle and the First Century Tribulation Lists’, ZNW 74 (1983) 59–80, esp. 65; Fitzgerald, Cracks in an Earthen Vessel, 132–48; Martin Ebner, Leidenslisten und Apostelbrief: Untersuchungen zu Form, Motivik und Funktion der Peristasenkataloge bei Paulus (Würzburg: Echter, 1991) 20–92). But even if Paul employs irony or the literary form of the peristasis catalogue in this passage, the resulting account cannot have diverged too widely from his actual experience – a point well made by Andreas Lindemann, Der erste Korintherbrief (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000) 108.

⁵⁹ See, for example, Plautus Stichus 155–70; Menaechmi 77–109. Note Cicero’s description of the lower class as ‘wretched and hungry’ (misera ac ieiuna) in Ad Att. 1.16.11. Martial 10.5 portrays the poor craving morsels of bread fit only for dogs. See esp. the complaint of the poor over hunger in Lucian Saturnalia 19, 31, 38. Even artisans often went hungry, despite having worked day and night; see Lucian Gallus 1; Cataplus 20; Saturn. 20.

⁶⁰ The numbers of homeless are impossible to estimate, owing to the failure of archaeology and epigraphy to provide data; see Ramsay MacMullen, Roman Social Relations 50 B.C. to A.D. 284 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974) 92–3. We are left to draw inferences from literature, e.g., Strabo 14.2.5; Seneca Adv. Helv. 12.1; Appian B.C. 2.120; Martial 10.5; Juvenal 5.8; Luke 16:20.

⁶¹ Compare Demosthenes’ explanation of his decision to depart from Athens into exile rather than endure imprisonment at the age of sixty in Ep. 2.17: ‘I changed my residence to another country because, in the first place, I was pained at contemplating the disgrace of imprisonment, and in the second, on account of my age I was in no condition to endure the bodily discomforts (διὰ τὴν ἡλικίαν οὐκ ἂν οἷός τ᾿ ὢν τῷ σώματι τὴν κακοπαθίαν ὑπενεγκεῖν)’; Demosthenes VII. Letters (trans. Norman J. DeWitt; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962) 219.

⁶² H. Hitzig, ‘Carcer’, Pauly’s Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft III, 2 (ed. G. Wissowa; Stuttgart: J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1899) 1576–81; W. Macheiner, ‘Gefangenschaft’, Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum (vol. 9; ed. T. Klauser; Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1976) 318–45; W. Eisenhut, ‘Die römische Gefängnisstrafe’, ANRW 1.2 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1972) 268–82; Craig S. Wansink, Chained in Christ: The Experience and Rhetoric of Paul’s Imprisonments (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996) 27–95.

⁶³ Arthur Droge, ‘Mori Lucrum: Paul and Ancient Theories of Suicide’, NovT 30 (1988) 263–86; Wansink, Chained in Christ, 119–24.

⁶⁴ On the ‘proofs’ in the art of rhetoric – the ‘ethical’, the ‘pathetical’, and the ‘logical’ – see Aristotle Rhet. 1.2.3–6; Heinrich Lausberg, Handbook of Literary Rhetoric: A Foundation for Literary Study (Leiden: Brill, 1998) 163–4.

⁶⁵ On the role of the pathetic proofs in the invention of discourse, see in general Josef Martin, Antike Rhetorik: Technik und Methode (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1974) 158–66.

⁶⁶ Especially evident in the ‘popular’ writings – comedy, mime, satire; see Cokayne, Experiencing Old Age, 15–17; Parkin, Old Age in the Roman World, 79–89.

⁶⁷ Stobaeus Flor. 50: ninety-five passages from forty-two different authors; Parkin, Old Age in the Roman World, 58.

⁶⁸ Ps.-Plato Axiochus 367B; Pseudo-Plato, Axiochus (trans. Jackson P. Hershbell; Chico: Scholars Press, 1981) 37.

⁶⁹ Juvenal Sat. 10.188–288; see the detailed analysis in Parkin, Old Age in the Roman World, 80–6.

⁷⁰ Juvenal Sat. 10.218–19, 227–9, 232–6; Juvenal and Perseus (trans. G. G. Ramsay; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979) 210–11.

⁷¹ Pliny Ep. 8.18.9; Pliny. Letters, Books VIII-X and Panegyricus (trans. Betty Radice; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976) 57. See the similar descriptions of old men in Pliny the Elder NH 28.14.56 and Lucian Dial. Mort. 6.2.

⁷² Stobaeus Flor. 50.2.85; trans. by Parkin, Old Age in the Roman World, 225.

⁷³ BGU I 180, lines 18–23 (178 ce); cited and discussed in Arzt-Grabner, Philemon, 76–7, observing: ‘Die Formulierung ist vom Inhalt her jener, die Paulus verwendet, nicht so unähnlich.’

⁷⁴ Fitzmyer, Philemon, 105: ‘Paul calls himself an old man to provoke sympathy in Philemon and the rest of the audience.’

⁷⁵ Martin, Antike Rhetorik, 162: ‘Die Hauptrolle bei der Verwendung des πάθος spielt der ἔλεος, οἶκτος, die commiseration.’ On ἔλεος in rhetorical theory and practice, see Anaximenes Rhet. 34.1, 1439b17–18; Aristotle Rhet. 2.8.1–16; Rhet. ad Her. 2.31.50; Cicero Brutus 50.188; Quintilian Inst. Orat. 6.2.20; Anonymous Seguerianus Rhet. 456.20–7 (Spengel).

⁷⁶ Quintilian Inst. Orat. 6.1.23.

⁷⁷ Cf. David Konstan, Pity Transformed (London: Duckworth, 2001).

⁷⁸ On the ‘ethical’ proofs in ancient rhetoric, see Lausberg, Handbook of Literary Rhetoric, 163–4; George Kennedy, The Art of Persuasion in Greece (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963) 91–2; Jakob Wisse, Ethos and Pathos from Aristotle to Cicero (Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1989).

⁷⁹ E.g., Dunn, Philemon, 327; G. K. Beale, Colossians and Philemon (BECNT; Dallas: Baker Academic, 2019) 400–4; Timothy A. Brookins, ‘“I Rather Appeal to Auctoritas”: Roman Conceptualizations of Power and Paul’s Appeal to Philemon’, CBQ 77 (2015) 302–21, esp. 309–12.

⁸⁰ See the detailed analyses in Parkin, Old Age in the Roman World, 61–7 and Harrison, ‘Two Approaches to Aging in Antiquity’, 258–63.

⁸¹ Cicero De Sen. 3.8.

⁸² Parkin, Old Age in the Roman World, 66.

⁸³ Cicero De Sen. 17.61; Parkin, Old Age in the Roman World, 63.

⁸⁴ See the iconographic evidence assembled by Cokayne, Experiencing Old Age in Ancient Rome, 18–29, Plates 2–9.

⁸⁵ Cokayne, Experiencing Old Age in Ancient Rome, 18.

⁸⁶ Cokayne, Experiencing Old Age in Ancient Rome, 21.

⁸⁷ Cokayne, Experiencing Old Age in Ancient Rome, 21.

⁸⁸ Cokayne, Experiencing Old Age in Ancient Rome, 23–4, 29.

⁸⁹ Plutarch An seni 783F. Cf. Parkin, Old Age in the Roman World, 67.

⁹⁰ Plutarch An seni 788C.

⁹¹ Plutarch An seni 797E.

⁹² Plutarch An seni 795E–796F.

⁹³ Pliny Ep. 3.1.

⁹⁴ Pliny Ep. 3.1.3–5.

⁹⁵ Pliny Ep. 3.1.10.

⁹⁶ Pliny Ep. 3.1.1.

⁹⁷ Ptolemy Tetr. 6.10.

⁹⁸ Ptolemy Tetr. 4.10.26.

⁹⁹ Ptolemy Tetr. 4.10.26.

¹⁰⁰ Plato Rep. 1.329e.

¹⁰¹ Similarly, Carolyn Osiek, Philippians, Philemon (ANTC; Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2000) 135–6; Dunn, Philemon, 327.

¹⁰² Théo Preiss, Life in Christ (London: SCM, 1954) 32: ‘with respect to style, perhaps the best of Paul’s epistles, a true chef d’oeuvre of tact and heart’; F. Forrester Church, ‘Rhetorical Structure and Design in Paul’s Letter to Philemon’, HTR 71 (1978) 17–33.

¹⁰³ Hock, ‘A Support for His Old Age’, 81.

¹⁰⁴ Beale, Colossians and Philemon, 401.

¹⁰⁵ Xenophon of Ephesus, Ephesiaca 1.14.4.

¹⁰⁶ Plutarch, Solon 22.1.4: the law attributed to Solon stated that he who did not support (τρέφειν) his parents was to be ἄτιμος, deprived of citizen rights. Vitruvius, De arch. 6. Praef. 3: ‘The laws of all the Greeks provide that parents be fed by children, but among the Athenians not all, only those who have taught them a trade.’

¹⁰⁷ Aristotle, Ath. Pol. 55.3.

¹⁰⁸ Hierocles ap. Stobaeus, Flor. 25.53; Parkin, Old Age in the Roman World, 208.

¹⁰⁹ Menander Γεωργός lines 59–62; Menander. The Principal Fragments (trans. Francis G. Allinson; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964) 333.

¹¹⁰ Menander Γεωργός line 73.

¹¹¹ Plutarch An seni 783B–C, 783F–784A, 785C–E, 788A–B, 789C, 790C.

¹¹² Stobaeus Flor. 50.2.85; Parkin, Old Age in the Roman World, 244.

¹¹³ Plutarch Cato Maior 24.