Hoi Polloi and whores at sea

This dilatory blogger (apologies for that) spent the weekend in sunny Durham at the Classical Association, partly in order to hear the presidential address by Christopher Rowe on the relationship between Plato and Socrates - and to consider what next year's President (your same TLS blogger) might contribute in his turn.

After introducing us to a man called Plocrates and delivering a powerful Platonic coda on the general purpose of scholarship, Professor Rowe provoked some college bar discusion on the topic of Hoi Polloi. In Plato's view, it seems, these were not primarily the great unwashed, the pullers of oars and heavers of water; Hoi Polloi were most of all the rich and powerful men who saw no benefit in a broadening and deepening education at public expense. The President in his masterly address did not name names from our own coalition times; but afterwards amid the Durham ales there was less inhibition.

If I had been asked on the northward train about 'naval imagery' in Greek epigrams, I would not have got much past 'the ship of state' - despite spending more than usual time this year in the Greek Anthology. On the southward way home, I could have chatted happily about how Alsclepiades' 'twenty-oared cargo ships for ship owners' (AP5.161) represented elderly prostitutes who took 20 men in a day and whose piracy of mens' purses left clients more ruined than castway sailors.

So thanks to Maria Kanellou of UCL for that - and for discussing how for Meleager (AP12.157) the magnitude of the ocean meant 'an open sea of boys of every race'.