As examples of the Roman poetry book composed of ten poems, Vergil's Eclogues, Horace's Sermones 1 and Tibullus' first book of Elegies are conspicuous for their similarity of form, all three containing poems of uniform metre and comparable length. Although we cannot be certain that these were the first or only ten poem books in the history of Latin poetry, we cannot help but notice the circumstances that draw them together: their close succession within the space of a decade, their identical positions as the first major publication of each author's career and the well-documented personal association between Horace as central figure of the succession and his two fellow poets, especially his close friendship with Vergil at the time he was composing the Satire Book. While inconclusive in themselves, these circumstances are an inducement to look closely at such similarities of compositional design as the books themselves may show.

Language is among the most mysterious of man's attributes. Its power not only to communicate truths about reality, but also to compel assent in the face of reality has often appeared miraculous, magical, and also dangerous. The marvel that mere words could impel men to the most momentous actions, and the admiration or fear that this fact inspires, are recurrent themes in classical literature. To express and understand this power Greek myth early framed the figure of Orpheus, a magical singer, half-man, half-god, able to move all of nature by his song. How that myth shifts in meaning and emphasis in representing that power is the subject of this essay. Though primarily concerned with classical writers, I shall also consider how a few modern poets used and transmuted this mythic material. My reading of the myth is both diachronic and synchronic. I attempt to study some aspects of its historical development and also to interpret it (especially in part I) as if all of its versions, taken together, form a contemporary statement about the relation of art and life.

Orpheus is a complex, multifaceted figure. For the ancients he is not only the archetypal poet, but also the founder of a mystical religion known as Orphism, with a well-developed theology, cosmogony, and eschatology of which much survives in hymns and short epics, mostly of late date. The ‘poetic’ Orpheus inevitably overlaps with the founder of Orphism, but it is the Orpheus of the poetic tradition that this essay discusses.

Plato's so-called ‘middle period’ saw the composition of what are generally agreed to be his finest philosophical dramas, and of these the Symposium is usually singled out for special praise. Yet it is only recently that serious attempts have been made to approach the Symposium as a work of literature rather than a philosophical treatise. Those who employ the work as a source-book for Platonist doctrines rarely venture beyond Socrates' dialectical refutation of Agathon and his report of what Diotima told him (199c-212b); and if they do, it is to point out the logical or perceptual fallacies — i.e. the philosophical deficiencies — of the other five encomia and to find in Alcibiades' contribution a glowing tribute by Plato to that most remarkable of human personalities, the philosopher Socrates. This, however, is not the way to arrive at a real understanding of the Symposium. The author clearly intends the reader to respond to this work not as a philosophical treatise on the subject of Eros but as a work of literature which portrays a group of thinking human beings engaged in appraisal of an issue which is of fundamental importance in their lives. His primary purpose in dramatising this intellectual event is thus not to expound the philosopher's conception of Eros or to expose our minds to auto to kalon (‘the beautiful itself’). Rather the true subject of the work is man the intellectual animal, whose logoi (‘speeches’) demonstrate his capacity for analysing, evaluating and idealising his feelings and aspirations. It depicts ‘philosophy brought down from the sky and located in the cities and homes of men’; we are shown how, and how successfully, philosophy can function as a vital constituent of human life, rather than a barren and essentially irrelevant dispute about the mechanics of the universe.