BOWERSOCK, G. W., Plutarch and the Sublime Hymn of Ofellius Laetus , Greek, Roman and 
Byzantine Studies, 23:3 (1982:Autumn) p.275 

Plutarch and the Sublime Hymn 
of Of ell ius Laetus 

G. W. Bowersock 

JOHANNES NOLLE has recently published the full text of an in­
scription from the Street of Domitian in Ephesus. l It commemo­
rates a Platonic philosopher by the name of Ofellius Laetus: 

'O<!>b •. AtOv AaLTOV TIAaTWVtKOV <!>tAO<T[O<PoV] 
e7Tt8EtgaJ.L€vov AOYWV Kat ",,8ow mi[<Tav] , , 

ap€T'YIV' 
€i KaTa TIv8ayopav tjlvXT, J.L€Ta/3atVEt ec; aAAov, 

ev <TOt, AaLTE, TIAaTwv ~i11TaAt <TW~OJ.L€voc;. 

Nolle argued incontestably that this Laetus is identical to the man 
known from a verse inscription at Athens with nearly the same two 
final lines as the Ephesian text (IG 112 3816): 

8 \.' A' , ., " €tOl\,oyov atTOtO J.L€Tap<TtOv VJ.LVOV aKOV<Tac; 
ovpavov av8pcinrotc; €l'8ov avOLY0J.L€VOv· 

€t KaTa TIv8ayopav tjlvXT, J.L€Ta/3atVEt ec; aAAov, 
ev <TOt, AaL'TE, TIAaTwv ~i11TaAt <PatVOJ.L€voc;. 

The Athenian inscription has generally been dated to the third cen­
tury A.D., although Dittenberger had assigned it to the first.2 Now on 
the basis of the letter forms of the stone at Ephesus Nolle has estab­
lished that this inscription must be dated to the first century of the 
Empire and accordingly that Dittenberger's date for the Athenian 
text was correct. The Ephesian text has therefore given us precious 
new evidence-not only Laetus' nomen gentile but his date and his 
role as a Platonic philosopher. 1. and L. Robert have supplemented 
Nolle's conclusions with illuminating remarks on Laetus' 8€OAOyia as 
well as an interpretation of Philostratus Vito Apol. 4.21 (Bull.epig. 
1981, 481). 

The revelation that Laetus was a Platonic philosopher at last re­
solves some of Wilamowitz's uncertainty: "Nescio carmina interpreter 

1 "Of ell ius Laetus, platonischer Philosoph," ZPE 41 (1980 197-206. 
2 Ad IG III 770. In IG 112 Kirchner preferred to accept the third-century date sug­

gested by Kaibel (Epigr.gr. 882) on the basis of comparison with Plotinus. 

275 



BOWERSOCK, G. W., Plutarch and the Sublime Hymn of Ofellius Laetus , Greek, Roman and 
Byzantine Studies, 23:3 (1982:Autumn) p.275 

276 PLUTARCH AND OFELLIUS LAETUS 

an philosophiam an denique declamationes."3 Although, on the evi­
dence adduced so far, Laetus' hymn could have been in either prose 
or verse, it was undoubtedly philosophic in substance. As an ex­
ponent of the divine glory he would have created his piece with 
material from what another Platonist, Apuleius, calls naturalis philo­
sophia.4 The reference to the opening of heaven in the Athenian 
inscription must be more than a metaphor for rapture on the part of 
the listener. Laetus' treatment of the Platonic god is related to the 
category of lj>vUtKOr; vf...I"vor;, which Menander Rhetor (I 336f) was 
later to elaborate for prose authors who undertook to extol the divine 
by vivid descriptions of physical phenomena. For a Platonist the 
supreme god was lJ1rEpovpavwr;,5 and Apuleius emphasized in his 
Apologia the importance of heights beyond the height of heaven: quin 
altitudinis studio secta ista [sc. Platonica] etiam caelo ipso sublimiora 
quaepiam vestigavit et in extimo mundi tergo restitit. 6 To evoke the 
Platonic god the speaker would have, quite literally, to imagine the 
opening of heaven and the divinity beyond it. 

The significance of heavenly height in middle Platonism will serve 
to explain the expression J.LETapUWr; vJ.Lvor; in the first line of the 
Athenian epigram. The hymn was an eloquent kind of f...I"ETapuwAoyia 
(sometimes called J,LETapUwAEuXia, more often simply f...I"ETEWpOAO­

yia).7 Laetus' hymn was not, in any vague sense, sublime. It was 
sublime in the precise sense of sublimis in Apuleius. It was a hymn 
about the high realm of the world, heaven and what lay beyond: a ., , , 
Vf...l"VOr; 71'Ept f...I"ETapUI"WV. 

It might naturally be expected that a Platonist of the early empire 
with a taste for Ta lj>vU(,Ka would have been of no small interest to 
that prolific Platonist, Plutarch, at the beginning of the second cen­
tury A. D. The conclusions that can be drawn from the inscriptions of 
Ofellius Laetus make it more than likely that the hitherto mysterious 
AaLTor;, invoked twice by Plutarch in his Aetia Physica, is the same 
man (Mar. 911F, 913E). In both instances Plutarch's Laetus had 

3 At Kaibel 882, and repeated by Kirchner. 
4 Apul. De dog. Plat. 189: Nam, quoniam tres partes philosophiae congruere inter se pri­

mus obtinuit, nos quoque separatim dicemus de singulis, a naturali philosophia Jacientes 
exordium. This is the category of Ttl fj>vutKa. For Apuleius as philosophus Platonicus see 
Inscr.Lat.Algerie I 2115 (Madaura). 

5 PI. Phdr. 247 c: TOV Se lnrEpOVpavwv T01TOV OWE TL~ V/-LVTjUE 1TW TWV rflSE 1TOL7JTiJ~ 
OWE 1TOT~ V/-LvrWEL KaT' a~iav. 

6 Apol. 64. Apuleius goes on to cite the passage in the Phaedrus, noted above. 
7 Cj Diog.Laert. 5.43 (Theophrastus' rij~ /-LETaPUWAEUXla~ a') and 5.44 (his /-LETaP­

UWAO')'LKWV a'p). Cj Poseidonius' nepL p.ETEWpWV (Diog.Laert. 7.l35 and 144); also 
Epicurus' letter (2) 1TEpi /-LETaPULwV (Diog.Laert. 10.29). 



BOWERSOCK, G. W., Plutarch and the Sublime Hymn of Ofellius Laetus , Greek, Roman and 
Byzantine Studies, 23:3 (1982:Autumn) p.275 

G. W. BOWERSOCK 277 

offered opInIOns on rainfall and the effect of moisture on plants. 
Although Plutarch regularly cites the great authorities from the past, 
such as Heraclitus and Parmenides, with verbs in the present tense 
(cp7]cri, icrTOpli, JUXPTVpEL) , he writes E'AeYEv of Laetus both times. 
The implication is that Laetus was some kind of contemporary wit­
ness, therefore of just the period to which Ofellius Laetus has lately 
been assigned. Plutarch's Laetus can now be given a certain sub­
stance-a Platonic philosopher of the first century A.D., honored in 
Asia Minor as well as in Greece (where Plutarch presumably knew 
him). 

The name Ofellius (also spelled Ofillius) turns up at Athens in the 
middle of the second century A. D. in the person of Ofillius Inge­
nuus,s whose nomen has been plausibly connected with the presence 
of A. Ofellius Maior Macedo, a procurator honored in Epirus some 
generations previously.9 Apart from Macedo's service in the legion I 
Minervia, raised in about 83 by Domitian, his career shows no cer­
tain indication of date. The reign of Hadrian has been suggested, but 
an earlier time is possible.lO The Platonist Ofellius Laetus, known in 
Athens at a time long before the Ofellii can be attested as a family at 
Ephesus,l1 probably points to a date for the procurator Macedo in 
Greece in the last decades of the first century. The Platonic philoso­
pher must be connected with him and, in all likelihood, owed his 
gentilicium to him.12 

A Domitianic date for Ofellius Macedo has important implications 
for the history of an office which he is known to have held under an 
unidentified emperor, the procuratorship a vo!uptatibus Augusti (U7TO 
TWV u7To'AaV<TEWV LE{3a<TTov). Pflaum, operating with a later da:e for 
Macedo, judged this procuratorship to be a Hadrianic revival of the 
infamous post associated with Tiberius~ 13 but we now know that Ti. 

B J. H. Oliver, Marcus Aurelius: Aspects of Civic and Cultural Policy in the East (Hes­
peria Suppl. 13 [1970]) 3 fr.C.I8; cf 4-9 fLE.43, 81, and 85. See also E. Birley, Lato­
mus 31 (972) 917, and W. Eck, RE Suppl. 15 (1978) 294 S.v. Ila. 

9 ILS 8849, a Greek inscription of Nicopolis (cf Lebas II 1076). 
10 H.-G. Pflaum, Les carrieres procuratoriennes equestres I (Paris 1960) 274: "Ces 

donnees [i.e., the evidence for senatorial Ofellii in the second half of the second cen­
tury A.D.] nous font supposer que, pour remonter au chevalier A. Of ell ius Maior 
Macedo, il faut compter une et peut-etre meme deux generations, ce qui mettrait ce 
personnage au temps d'Hadrien." Although this is scarcely a strong argument, P. R. C. 
Weaver has taken the Hadrianic date as firm, Antichthon 14 (1980) 147. 

11 Cf. Nolle {supra n.D 205 n.21. 
12 If the philosopher did not receive the citizenship from the procurator (the more 

likely alternative), there remains the possibility that Laetus and Macedo were blood 
relatives. Pflaum (supra n.10) speculated that Macedo might have been a Greek. 

13 Pflaum (supra n.10) 274, comparing Suet. Tib. 42. 



BOWERSOCK, G. W., Plutarch and the Sublime Hymn of Ofellius Laetus , Greek, Roman and 
Byzantine Studies, 23:3 (1982:Autumn) p.275 

278 PLUTARCH AND OFELLIUS LAETUS 

Claudius Classicus held this very office under Nerva and Trajan.14 

Classicus, who began his public career as a freedman, appears to have 
ended it with an equestrian procuratorship of Alexandria.15 It looks as 
if, like the freedman father of Claudius Etruscus, he had become a 
knight at some stage. Accordingly he may have held the procurator­
ship a vo/uptatibus also as a knight, just as Ofellius Macedo certainly 
did. Domitian is known to have entrusted to knights posts that had 
been formerly assigned to freedmen. 16 

Ofellius Macedo thus brings Ofellius Laetus more closely into the 
intellectual world of the emperor Domitian, and that was precisely 
the world of Plutarch and his friends. It was, after all, under Do­
mitian that Plutarch visited Rome. And there he saw the philosopher 
Arulenus Rusticus, who reached the consulate in late 92 and must 
therefore have enjoyed some measure of imperial favor before the 
tide turned against all philosophers in the following year. Two par­
ticular friends of Plutarch, the brothers A vidii (Nigrinus and Quie­
tus), prospered under Domitian; Quietus came to the consulate in 93. 
Plutarch had probably associated with both A vidii when they were 
serving in Greece as well as when he was in Rome.l7 In this inter­
national group of cultured men whom Plutarch knew in the reign of 
Domitian, Ofellius Laetus can now take his place. 

Among the other friends of Plutarch was the Stoic Serapion, who 
was not only a philosopher but also a poet. 1. and L. Robert have 
recently invoked him precisely in connection with Laetus,18 since 
Nolle had repeated earlier opinion that the sublime hymn was prob­
ably a work in prose. Serapion clearly participated in the revival of the 

14 D. Knibbe, fOAl 49 Beibl. (1971) 19-20 no. 3 [AE 1972, 5741. Cj. 1. and L. 
Robert, BulUpig. 1974, 488; also W. Eck, RE Suppl. 14 (1974) 100 s. v. "Claudius 
I 07b." 

15 Ti. Claudius Classicus, the Trajanic procurator of Alexandria, seems clearly iden­
tical to the Trajanic occupant of the same post called Classicus (or erroneously KAau­
TLKO<;): Pflaum (supra n.lO) 164-65 no. 70. The prefect of Egypt addresses a letter to 
three strategoi (SB IV 7378) in which he calls Classicus 0 KPCtTLUTO<; E7TiTP07TO<;. The 
new inscription (supra n.14) shows that Classicus had an adiutor in Alexandria. Weaver 
(supra n.10) 150-55 is therefore probably right in inferring that Classicus had become a 
knight. The comparison with the father of Claudius Etruscus (Stat. Silv. 3.3.l43-45) is 
compelling. 

16 Observe the knight Titinius Capito, who served as a rationibus under Domitian, 
Nerva, and Trajan: ILS 1448. According to Tacitus (His!. l.58) Vitelli us had already 
used knights in such posts. For Domitian's policy see Suet. Dom. 7.2: quaedam ex 
maximis officiis inter libertinos equitesque R. communicavit. 

17 On the friends of Plutarch in Domitianic society see C. P. Jones, Plutarch and 
Rome (1971) 51-54. I should like to thank the author of that work for his acute criti­
cism of the present article. 

18 BulUpig. 1981,481. Cj. J. H. Oliver, Hesperia Suppl. 8 (949) 243-46, and C. P. 
Jones, Phoenix 32 (1978) 228-31. 



BOWERSOCK, G. W., Plutarch and the Sublime Hymn of Ofellius Laetus , Greek, Roman and 
Byzantine Studies, 23:3 (1982:Autumn) p.275 

G. W. BOWERSOCK 279 

old and honorable tradition of versified philosophy, practised formerly 
by the greatest authorities on TeX cpv(],tKa, Parmenides and Empedo­
des. Once Laetus is seen in the context of Plutarch's friends, it 
becomes more likely that his sublime hymn reflected this new fash­
ion of philosophy in verse. 

THE INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDY 

July, 1982