Ever since Proclus wrote his commentary on Plato's Republic, repeated attempts have been made to find a hidden number of cosmic significance in Rep. 8.546. For the Neo-Platonist it was natural to look for esoteric secrets in ancient works; among the men of the New Learning at the end of the Middle Ages there were enough astrologers and necromancers to ensure respect for the proposition; we are now again enamoured of irrationality. But the scholars who attempted such calculations around 1900 must have considered Plato himself a mystery-monger.

In this article I propose: (i) to show why such attempts are mistaken, (ii) to discuss what early writers who mention the passage say about its meaning, (iii) to provide a mathematician's translation that fits the context, and to comment on it; for the currently accepted explanation is unsatisfactory.

‘There is fairly widespread agreement that the geometrical number is 12,960,000 = 3,6002 = 4,800 × 2,700, but on the method by which this number is reached the widest divergence exists’ or, from an earlier, different guess: ‘…one can, so to speak, state a priori that Plato's number is a multiple of 19 ten thousands’, i.e. the text is approached with a ready-made answer in mind. There are three further objections to the conventional view, (a) It takes the text out of its context as if it had strayed from the Timaeus.

The Hiero is an account in Socratic conversational form of a meeting between Simonides the poet and Hiero the tyrant of Syracuse; it was written by Xenophon of Athens in the fourth century b.c., but is set in the fifth, when the historical Simonides and Hiero lived and met. The subject they are portrayed discussing is the relative happiness of the tyrant and private individual. Plato also makes this a topic of discussion in his Republic. However, whereas Plato writes a regular Socratic dialogue, Xenophon does not, for though he represents his characters using Socratic conversation, Socrates himself does not appear; the characteros of the Hiero are Simonides and Hiero, poet and tyrant. This is the problem of the Hiero. It requires explanation.

The action of the Hiero is initiated by Simonides and begins in the following way:

Simonides the poet once came to the court of Hiero the tyrant. When they were both at leisure, Simonides said, ‘Would you be willing to tell me, Hiero, something you are likely to know better than I?’ And Hiero said, ‘What is it that I should know better than you, who are such a wise man?’ He replied, ‘I know that you were once a private individual and are now a tyrant. Since you have experienced both conditions, you are likely to know better than I how tyrannical life differs from private life in respect of men's pleasures and griefs’ (1.1–2).

The identification of Simonides as a wise man who nevertheless seeks wisdom from others establishes his Socratic nature from the start.

Plato's views on tragedy depend in large part on his views about the ethical consequences of emotional arousal. In the Republic, Plato treats the desires we feel in everyday life to weep and feel pity as appetites exactly like those for food or sex, whose satisfactions are ‘replenishments’. Physical desire is not reprehensible in itself, but is simply non-rational, not identical with reason but capable of being brought into agreement with it. Some desires, like that for simple and wholesome food, are in fact ‘necessary’ and approved by reason. Other appetites, like lust and gluttony, are ‘unnecessary’ and anti-rational in that they are actively opposed to reason. According to the Republic, the satisfaction of these ‘unnecessary’ desires inevitably strengthens the elements in the soul that oppose reason. The desire to weep at the theatre is treated in this dialogue as just such an anti-rational desire. Even a temporary indulgence in tragic pity and fear has a permanent deleterious effect on the soul, although it does not lead directly to any action.

This paper argues that a radically different psychological theory, with important aesthetic implications, appears in the discussion of wine-drinking in Books 1 and 2 of Plato's Laws. Though this long passage has been much scorned and neglected, it is of considerable philosophical importance. While in the Republic Plato condemns drunkenness and other anti-rational states, in the Laws he extols the benefits of a hypothetical ‘fear drug’ that could induce a temporary state of anti-rational terror and of wine to produce other anti-rational emotions and desires.

The Cratylus begins with a paradox; it ends with a paradox; and it has a paradox in between. But this disturbing characteristic of the dialogue has been overshadowed, not to say ignored, in the literature. For commentators have seen it as their task to discover exactly what theory of language Plato himself, despite his declared perplexity, intends to adopt as he rejects the alternatives of Hermogenes and Cratylus. A common view, then, has been to suppose that the ⋯πορίαι of the dialogue are mere camouflage for the hidden dogma, whatever that may be. A favoured candidate, of course, has been the theory of transcendent forms, in some preliminary version. As a consequence, the dialogue has often been seen as a precursor to the great metaphysical works of Plato's middle period such as the Phaedo or the Republic.

Not so, I shall argue. My case is that this dialogue centres upon a series of paradoxes which are both powerful and unsettling. Their final effect is to attack the theory of forms, not to defend it. They are, I suggest, genuine proposals of philosophical difficulty, rather than mere artifice to disguise an idealist truth. As such, they belong, and may clearly be seen to belong, with works of the critical period which subject the theory of forms to scrutiny. Thus the ⋯πορίαι of the Cratylus have their counterparts in the Parmenides, the Theaetetus and the Sophist. I propose, then, that the dialogue was written during the late, critical period of Plato's philosophical activity.

The speech Against Euergos and Mnesiboulos describes a dispute over some naval gear. The dispute occurred early in the year 357/6 b.c. ⋯π' Ἀγαθοκλ⋯ους ἄρχοντος, Dem. 47.44), when the speaker was a trierarch and supervisor of his symmory (τρɩηραρχ⋯ν κα⋯ ⋯πɩμελητ⋯ς ὢν τ⋯ς συμμορ⋯ας, Dem. 47.22), and he refers to ‘the law of Periandros, by which the symmories were organized’ (⋯ νóμος ⋯ το⋯ Περɩ⋯νδρου…καθ' ὃν αἰ συμμορ⋯αɩ συνετ⋯χθησαν, Dem. 47.21). There is no other specific reference to the law of Periandros. If 357/6 was the first year of its operation, it was probably passed in 358/7, but that is not known for certain. The identity of the man is likewise uncertain, though it has plausibly been suggested that he was Periandros son of Polyaratos (Dem. 40.6–7) and that he was the Periandros who proposed an alliance between Athens and Arkadia in 362/1 (IG ii2 112 = Tod 144). However, his identity is of no importance for the present article. Here I am concerned only to try to reconstruct what the law said about the symmories. Despite a great deal of modern discussion this question has still not been satisfactorily solved.

The word συμμορ⋯α means ‘group’ or ‘division’ and does not necessarily have a technical or legal sense. But most of the Attic instances do have the special sense of a group of persons formed for the purpose of making payments of a compulsory tax or levy: either the property tax called εἰσɸορ⋯, which was imposed at irregular intervals, or payments towards the maintenance of ships in the Athenian navy, which were required every year. A fragment of Philokhoros says that Athenians were divided κατ⋯ συμμορ⋯ας for the first time in 378/7, and it is generally agreed that this means that symmories were first formed in 378 for the payment of eisphora. For the navy, however, there is no trace of symmories before the 350s, and everyone agrees that it was the law of Periandros which introduced the use of symmories for maintaining ships, which had previously been the sole responsibility of one trierarch or (more usually in the fourth century) a pair of syntrierarchs for each ship.

M. I. Finley in his Politics in the Ancient World (Cambridge, 1983), 92–6 has recently cast doubt on the extent to which religious phenomena were taken seriously in ancient times. We believe that in stressing the reasons for scepticism he has overlooked much positive evidence for the impact of religious scruples on political behaviour and that in generalising he has undervalued the differences in this respect between ancient societies. The significance of some of this positive evidence is admittedly uncertain since in civilian life scruples might be easy to observe without great suffering. The acid test is in time of war, so that is the concern of our present enquiry. That attitudes varied can be shown only by comparing societies. We have here limited our discussion to three for which the evidence is well preserved: the world of the Greek city before Alexander the Great, Rome before Constantine, and the Jews in the Hellenistic and Roman period. Elucidation of the reasons for their distinct attitudes would reveal much about each of these societies and its religious practices and conceptions, but there will be space here only to show that considerable variety did indeed exist.

Most ancient peoples assumed that their gods approved of war; the pacifism of some pre-Constantinian Christians was exceptional. Nor did such rules in combat as were observed necessarily have a religious foundation. Ancient like modern scruples were often based on moral and humanitarian grounds, as in the treatment of corpses and civilians; the gods, as the guardians of general morality, might be involved in such matters, but only at a remove.

One of four laws passed by Clodius early in 58 b.c. in some way modified the regulations governing obnuntiatio, the right possessed by magistrates and augurs to obstruct proceedings of the popular assemblies through announcement of unfavourable omens. The precise nature of the change is obscured by the fact that our main source, Cicero, describes it, as he does all of Clodius' legislation, in hyperbolic and polemical terms, alleging that it wholly abolished the right of obnuntiatio, a claim contradicted by other evidence in his writings, which provide many examples of its continuing use. The later ancient sources repeat the substance of Cicero's main allegations and, accordingly, do little to help disentangle the facts from the hyperbole. Inadequate information about the earlier regulations relating to obnuntiatio, which were contained in two laws of the mid-second century, the Leges Aelia et Fufia, further hampers the search for the precise terms of Clodius' amendment.

None of this, however, has discouraged speculation. The problem has exerted a peculiar fascination and has generated a succession of careful studies. Five main hypotheses have emerged: that the right of obnuntiatio was taken from curule magistrates; that it was taken from curule magistrates, but only in relation to legislative comitia; that it was taken from both curule magistrates and tribunes, but only in relation to legislative comitia; that it was abolished entirely, but soon restored by senatorial annulment of the reform; that it was left intact, but the assemblies were empowered to disallow it on any given occasion.

My title links together kings, war, and the economy, and the linkage is deliberate. I do not of course wish to suggest that Hellenistic kings did nothing but fight wars, that they were responsible for all the wars in the period, that royal wars were nothing but a form of economic activity, or that the economy of the kings was dependent purely on the fruits of military success, though there would be an element of truth in all these propositions. But I wish to react against the frequent tendency to separate topics that are related, the tendency to treat notions relating to what kings were or should be as something distinct from what they actually did, and the tendency to treat political and military history on the one hand as something separate from economic and social history on the other.

A number of provisos should be made at the outset. The title promises more than the paper can deliver; in particular, more will be said about kings and war than about kings and the economy. The subject is handled at a probably excessive level of generalization and abstraction. I talk about Hellenistic kings in general, but in practice it would obviously be necessary to draw distinctions between different dynasties, different times and places, and individual rulers, and some of those distinctions I shall indicate. Conclusions are provisional and subject to modification and considerable expansion in detail. Finally, two points of terminology. I use the word ‘Hellenistic’ for no better reason than out of the force of acquired habit, but of course the word and the concept are modern inventions that were unknown to the ancient world.

Nisbet and Kraggerud make good cases for taking the ninth Epode as a dramatic recreation of the Actium campaign. Horace begins in fearful anticipation; then the crisis comes, first on land and then on sea; Antony turns to flight; and — even though some danger remains, and there is metus as well as joy at the end of the poem — the celebrations can finally begin. On this reading there remains the familiar problem of vv. 17–20:

at huc frementes uerterunt bis mille equos

Galli canentes Caesarem,

hostiliumque nauium portu latent

puppes sinistrorsum citae.

The first couplet clearly relates to the defection of Amyntas' Galatians, the decisive moment in the fighting on land; the second must describe the crucial battle on sea. There is no problem in portu latent. The fleet has withdrawn, and is skulking in harbour instead of fighting. But what of nauium…puppes sinistrorsum citae? The difficulty is notorious: the secondary sources do not clearly describe any movement ‘toward the left’, and it is hard to see why Horace chooses so enigmatic a phrase to capture the fighting. His audience would not make much of the topographical detail in any case: unless they had been at Actium themselves (and most of his readers of course had not), their reaction to the words would centre on other associations — the contrast between these magnificent puppes (Antony's ships were probably already famed for their size and grandeur) and their undignified sideways movement; the suggestions of ill omen in sinistrorsum.

Rudolf Pfeiffer (Callimachus, ii.xxxvi–xxxvii) believed that, as a young man, Callimachus wrote four books of Aetia. To these the poet added in his old age a Reply to his Critics (fr. 1), and a slightly revised version of his recent occasional elegy, the Lock of Berenice (fr. 110, now including a nuptial rite which has survived only in the translation by Catullus, 66.79–88); this revised Coma became the last poem in Aetia book 4, to be followed by an Epilogue (fr. 112) which may mark a transition to the Iambi. Pfeiffer's theory generally held the field until the brilliant article of P. J. Parsons, in ZPE 25 (1977), 1–50. With the help of newly recovered papyrus fragments Parsons showed that a previously unplaced elegy celebrating a Nemean victory (fr. 383 Pf.) was connected to the story of Molorchus (frs. 54–9), who entertained Heracles before that hero killed the Nemean lion and instituted the Nemean Games; thus the poem belonged to Aetia book 3. Furthermore, various pieces of evidence converge (Parsons, pp. 46–8) to make it probable, if not wholly certain, that this substantial poem (some 200 lines long) stood first in its book. So it appears that, at least in the final form of the Aetia, books 3–4 were framed by two poems honouring the wife of Ptolemy III Euergetes, namely Victoria Berenices (Parsons' title) and Coma Berenices.

Soon afterwards a further important advance was made by E. Livrea (ZPE 34 [1979], 37ff.), who perceived, on grounds of subject-matter as well as papyrology, that the poor man who sets a mousetrap in fr. 177 Pf. must be none other than Molorchus; note particularly the probable mention of Cleonae in fr. 177.37 Pf. = Supplementum Hellenisticum 259.37. Thus a new fragment of 38 lines accrued to the poem.

These discoveries have some implications for the composition of the Aetia. Addition of a Coma Berenices (94 lines in Catullus' version) to a pre-existent Aetia book 4 could be countenanced easily enough, but, as Parsons says (p. 50), it would have required a much more radical, and therefore less plausible, revision for Callimachus to have added Victoria Berenices to a pre-existent Aetia book 3. Accordingly Parsons suggested that the original Aetia contained only books 1–2, united by the conversation with the Muses; then in his old age Callimachus compiled two more books, partly at least from poems already composed, and gave them a frame of two poems honouring Queen Berenice. Parsons' view has, I think, been widely accepted; Professor Lloyd-Jones wrote in SIFC 77 (1984), 56 ‘No-one has yet argued against the simple modification of Pfeiffer's theory of the two editions of the Aetia which Mr. Parsons based on this discovery. The first edition comprised two books only.’

The Hellenistic poet Lycophron, who wrote tragedies and assembled the texts of comedy under Ptolemy Philadelphus for the Library at Alexandria, was probably also the author of the long poem Alexandra, which deals mainly with the theme of Troy. Recent studies by Stephanie West have appreciably advanced our understanding of this rather difficult poet. For the passages where Lycophron surprisingly presents phases of Roman history she cogently adduces a later poet, a ‘Deutero-Lycophron, …to be sought among the artists of Dionysus in southern Italy’. A theme in Graeco-Egyptian mythology is the subject of the present paper; and one of my main points is that recent Egyptological research has a clear bearing on one of the problems.

In classical antiquity Propertius' eloquence was renowned. His successor Ovid referred to the blandi praecepta Properti (Trist. 2.465) and to blandi…Propertius oris (ibid. 5.1.15). Quintilian (10.1.93) stated that to his taste the most tersus and elegans Latin elegist was Tibullus, but sunt qui Propertium malint. Martial (14.189) mentioned the facundi carmen iuuenale Properti.

Turn now from the opinions of ancient authors to those of some modern commentators as they try to elucidate various passages as presented in the extant manuscripts, and you encounter not the adjectives blandus, tersus, elegans, and facundus, but ‘strange’, ‘obscure’, ‘odd’, ‘slovenly’, and the like.

A major reason for such striking differences of opinion should be evident. Ovid, to whom Propertius was blandi oris, read a text separated from Propertius' autograph by at most a few decades. Modern scholars, however, must form their text from a few relatively late manuscripts, none earlier than c. 1200, in which Propertius' eloquence has been obscured by over twelve centuries of careless blundering and deliberate interpolation by a succession of scribes.

A generally accepted example of deliberate interpolation in the Propertian archetype is found at 2.32.3-6:

nam quid Praenesti dubias, o Cynthia, sortes,

quid petis Aeaei moenia Telegoni?

cur tua te Herculeum deportant esseda Tibur?

Appia cur totiens te uia †ducit anum†?

(ducit FLP, dicit N), where the name of some neighbouring town is required in the fourth verse to balance Praeneste, Tusculum, and Herculeum in the preceding three.

I offer further notes on the text of Propertius. In the apparatus Ω is employed to indicate the archetype, i.e. the consensus of N and two separate groups of humanistic manuscripts that I denote by the letters Π and Λ. The Π MSS (FLP) derive from a lost manuscript of Petrarch, itself copied from the manuscript A (which is not extant after 2.1.63). The Λ MSS are largely a group isolated by J. L. Butrica (The Manuscript Tradition of Propertius, Phoenix suppl. vol. 17, Toronto, 1984, 62–95), which derive from a third medieval source discovered by Poggio and brought to Italy, apparently in 1423. The oldest Λ manuscript is Vat. lat. 3273, copied by Panormita in Florence in 1427, here called T. Another independent descendant is S (Monacensis Univ. Cim. 22), written in Florence c. 1460 by Poggio's son Jacopo. Three other Florentine copies of the 1460s descend from a single source later than Λ: M (Paris. B. N. lat. 8233, formerly μ); U (Vat. Urb. lat. 641, formerly υ); and R (Bodmer. 141, once Abbey 5989). Butrica would cite also C (Romanus Casanatensis 15), written by Pomponio Leto c. 1470; but its witness is vitiated by the frequency both of error and of interpolation and its presence would confuse rather than clarify our picture of Λ. On the other hand I include the pair J (Parmensis Palat. Parm. 140, Florence, c. 1440) and K (Vratislauiensis Univ. Akc. 1948 KN 197, Padua 1469).

In recent years many historians have rightly emphasised aggressive imperialism as a key element in Roman political life in the Middle and Late Republic. This has led to reconsideration of the significance of the ‘just war’ theory associated with the college of fetiales. ‘On the basis of this fetial law of the Roman people, it can be understood that no war is justified unless it is waged after compensation has been demanded (sc. and refused by the enemy), or the war has been announced in advance and formally proclaimed.’ Earlier this century, scholars were happy to accept that this ‘fetial law’ implied that the Romans never initiated wars of aggression but fought only if they felt they were the aggrieved party. Scullard believed that ‘…in fact Roman religious law (the ius fetiale) did not countenance wars of aggression designed to gain new territory’ ; for Tenney Frank, ‘ the Roman mos maiorum did not recognise the right of aggression or a desire for more territory as just causes for war. That the institution was observed in good faith for centuries there can be no doubt.’

Recent scholars have been more sceptical. Harris sees the activities of the fetiales primarily as a psychological mechanism for assuaging the guilt feelings which even Romans will have been unable to escape when initiating totally unjustified wars of aggression: ‘the significance of the fetial procedure for declaring war was solely psychological’. Other writers have gone further in stressing its mystificatory and propaganda function.

Our scepticism about the efficacy of ‘fetial law’ in restraining the Romans' belligerence should be accompanied by a re-evaluation of our evidence regarding the fetiales and what they actually did. Such a re-evaluation will not affect our picture of the Romans of the Middle and Late Republic as aggressive and militaristic, but we may have to revise our views on how the fetiales fit into that picture. This paper makes no claim to analyse exhaustively every piece of evidence which might throw some light on the fetiales, let alone every interpretation to be found in the secondary literature; but it may be worthwhile to reconsider the main types of operations which the fetiales are said by our ancient sources to have been involved in.

The famous eastern tour of inspection undertaken by Scipio Aemilianus, L. Metellus Calvus and Sp. Mummius is now generally dated 140/39 b.c., where Diodorus seems to put it. The accepted view, however, involves discounting an explicit statement by Cicero. It also presents historical difficulties. In 140 b.c. there was no need for such a high-powered Roman initiative, and scholars can discover only very minor political results. Sherwin-White indeed criticised the envoys severely, especially Scipio; they were culpably blind to the new menace of Parthia, which was steadily dismembering the Seleucid Empire east of the Euphrates. This is fair criticism only on the 140/39 b.c. dating. Did Scipio and his colleagues fail to see what is patent to us today? It is time to reexamine rigorously the underlying assumption.

In Acad. prior. 2.5 Cicero defends a Roman noble's love of Greek learning in the following terms:

ego autem cum Graecas litteras M. Catonem in senectute didicisse acceperim, P. autem Africani historiae loquantur in legatione illa nobili, quam ante censuram obiit, Panaetium unum omnino comitem fuisse, nec litterarum Graecarum nee philosophiae iam ullum auctorem requiro.

The date of the embassy must be 144/3 b.c., if we follow the logic of this passage. Scipio was censor with L. Mummius in 142/1 b.c. and their public quarrel was hardly less notable than the embassy, in which L. Mummius' brother shared. Another Ciceronian passage – written some six years earlier – seems to contradict the dating offered in 45 b.c. In de republica 6.11 the elder Africanus prophesies his grandson's future greatness in the famous dream:

The last chapter of Politian's first Miscellanea dealt with the amica silentia lunae through which the Greeks sailed back to Troy (Aen. 2.255). He argued that the phrase should not be taken literally, as a statement that Troy fell at the new moon, but in an extended sense, as a poetic indication that the moon had not yet risen when the Greeks set sail. This reading had one merit: it explained how Virgil's moon could be silent while the Greeks were en route but shine during the battle for the city (Aen. 2.340). Yet Politian's effort to identify the phase of the moon described by Virgil was anything but clear:

Non igitur aut sera fuerit aut pernox luna, tum nec lunae quidem omnino coitus, sed tempus arbitror potius quamdiu illa non luceret.

Accordingly, though his arguments were sometimes repeated by commentators and teachers, they won little assent from scholars who occupied themselves seriously with the passage. In his Adversaria Turnebus took silentia lunae as referring ‘ad noctis taciturnitatem…non ad interlunium’. In the first chapter of his De rebus per epistolam quaesitis Giano Parrasio sharply criticised the fuzziness of Politian's explanation: ‘Ambages istae sunt, ambages’. More important, he quoted a line from the Little Iliad:

νὺξ μ⋯ν ἔην μέσση, λαμπρ⋯ δ' ⋯πέτελλε σελήνη.

This he rendered ‘Nox erat intempesta, nitebat et aurea coelo Luna’, and inferred from it that the moon had been up when Troy fell. In his Virgilius collation scriptorum Graecorum illustratus, finally, Fulvio Orsini published a scholium on Euripides' Hecuba, one which quoted both the line from the Little Iliad and an analysis of it by the Peripatetic Callisthenes. He too took the line as refuting Politian.

The difficulty of this little poem is shown by the facts that Ausonius had no idea what it was about, and that Westendorp Boerma's commentary takes 22 pages to explicate its five lines. The latter relies on Quintilian 8.3.27ff., who quotes the poem, saying that Vergil wrote it to attack a certain Cimber for his taste in obsolete words. This is no doubt the Annius Cimber whom Augustus ridiculed when reprimanding Mark Antony for a similar foible (Suet. Aug. 86) and who, as an antiquarius is contrasted with the Asiatici oratores. For convenience, I have kept Westendorp Boerma's text, but I take issue with his interpretation on two points.

4 tau Gallicum: since Bücheler tentatively suggested it in RhM 38 (1883), 508, the standard explanation of this has been to point out that a number of Latin inscriptions in Gaul use a Greek θ or else a barred D (Ð), to represent what appears to have been a dental fricative elsewhere indicated in Latin by -sd- or -st-. Thus Frank, AJP 56 (1935), 255, quotes (T)HYÐRITANVS (CIL xii 686) for what is elsewhere spelled Thysdritanus, and says that ‘Ð clearly represents the best that one Celt could do with sd’. On the basis of this supposed Gallic incompetence, Frank went on to see the repeated -st- sounds in the poem as some sort of joke on the orator's inability to pronounce this sound. His view seems to have been generally accepted.

There seems to me a profound error in this viewpoint which shows cultural imperialism at its worst. First, let us note that none of the examples of alleged substitution are in Latin words; they are native names for people or places or things. The Latin names by which we know some of them are only the approximation of foreigners, and not in any sense the ‘correct’ names of those people or places.

Within the increasingly complex picture which has emerged in recent years of the manuscript tradition of Ovid's Amores the relationship of the two earliest MSS appears to remain firm: cod. P or Puteaneus (Par. Lat. 8242) of the 9th or early 10th century, which begins at Am. 1.2.51, was copied, probably directly, from the second half of the 9th-century cod. R or Regius (Par. Lat. 7311), whose first half now ends at Am. 1.2.50. This view, which originates in S. Tafel's dissertation of 1910 and lies behind the stemma constructed by E. J. Kenney for his OCT edition of 1961 (p. vi), has come to be taken by Ovidian scholars (with the exception, however, of Munari, who left the question open) to be the truth. My purpose in this first section is to show that this idea is unlikely to be the truth and, in the form in which it has most strongly been put forward, cannot be the truth. In the second section consequences for the manuscript tradition as a whole are explored.

First we shall need some details. P, the slightly later manuscript, consists in all of 99 folia, of which 1–54 contain most, but not all, of the Heroides — not all, because they are in a lacunose state, a point to which we shall return in greater detail later. Foll. 55–6 are blank sheets of paper, not parchment, clearly inserted at a much later date during rebinding.

The high moral tone of Horace's Reguhls ode (3.5) makes it unsurprising that the poet should employ the traditional imagery of philosophers, both in the speech of Regulus and in the final simile. I should like here to point out some instances which seem to have escaped the notice of commentators.

This passage is intended to illustrate the lost ‘virtus’ of the prisoners in Carthage, who, Regulus claims, will be of no greater use to the Romans if ransomed since they were cowardly enough to surrender in the first place. For the first image of dyeing wool Kiessling–Heinze refer the reader to Lucretius 6.1074–7:

purpureusque colos conchyli iungitur una

corpore cum lanae, dirimi qui non queat usquam,

non si Neptuni fluctu renovare operam des,

non mare si totum velit eluere omnibus undis.

This gives the first hint that the image belongs to the philosophical tradition, though it does not seem to occur in the extant remains of Epicurus. This is confirmed by a passage of Plato, who at Rep. 429d ff. has an elaborate image taken from the dyer's art. The Guardians of the ideal city are to be carefully selected and prepared like wool for the dyeing process of education; then, as good wool keeps its colour after dyeing, so the Guardians will keep right opinions when they are taught them. The image is summarized by Socrates at 430a ff.:

At the age of twenty-five, Gn. Pompeius acquired the spectacular cognomen of Magnus. According to Plutarch (Pomp. 13), the name came either from the acclamation of his army in Africa, or at the instigation of Sulla. According to Livy, the practice began from the toadying of Pompeius' circle (‘ab adsentatione familiar’, 30.45.6). The cognomen invited play. At the Ludi Apollinares of July 59, Cicero tells us, the actor Diphilus won ‘a dozen encores’ when he pronounced, from a lost tragedy, the line ‘nostra miseria tu es magnus’. Four or five years later Catullus scored a fine hit, filching Pompeius' cognomen and giving it to his zealously competitive father-in-law: ‘Caesaris uisens monimenta magni’ (11.10). In Lucan's Bellum Civile such plays on the cognomen are elevated into something of considerable power, testifying to a consistent controlling design, of the sort which many still deny the poem.

When Pompeius first appears he is compared with Caesar, to his detriment: ‘nec coiere pares’ (1.129). So much for Pompeius' vaunted intolerance of an equal, of which we have just been reminded: ‘nec quemquam iam ferre potest Caesarue priorem | Pompeiusue parem’ (125f.). Many of the images in this introductory section have a programmatic power, and will recur. With ‘nec coiere pares’ Lucan presents the two as an ill-matched pair of gladiators. The metaphor is ubiquitous. Note, in particular, 5.1–3, and 6.3, ‘parque suum uidere dei’. We are further told that Pompeius seeks ‘fama’, is a ‘popularis’, indulges the people, basks in the applause he receives from the mob in his theatre: ‘famaeque petitor | multa dare in uolgus, totus popularibus auris | impelli plausuque sui gaudere theatri’ (131–3). We will return later to this complex of ideas.