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This chapter discusses the curriculum of texts stipulated in the Late Antique Neoplatonic schools as the material to be studied for the purpose of ascending the scales of virtue and sciences. The texts of Aristotle and Plato thought to correspond to political virtue and political science are identified, as are other texts related to these subjects. This produces a Neoplatonic ‘library’ of texts thought by Neoplatonic philosophers to relate to political philosophy.

This concluding chapter presents some final thoughts on the reading and translation of the Aeneid. It argues that we need to become more sophisticated in the way we analyse the relationship between two works of literature. It suggests that considerably more work needs to be done on the relationship between what is done in the schools and what is produced as ‘high culture’ by the graduates of those schools. The model provided by the Aeneid and its early modern progeny suggests that adopting a work of literature as a school text can become a proverbial two-edged sword. On the one hand, the fact that every educated person knew the Aeneid for hundreds of years provided opportunities that were fully exploited by writers like Le Plat, who parodied Virgil with the confidence that their work would be understood and appreciated in ways that are simply not possible today. On the other hand, the Aeneid was such a ubiquitous part of early modern culture that, as late as the 1970s, readers of Shakespeare's The Tempest simply failed to see it as the central subtext that it is now widely recognized to be.

This chapter turns to the writings of Confucius' first great philosophical rival, Mozi, or Mo Di. From its obscure beginnings, Mohism quickly burgeoned into an influential philosophical school with a firm hierarchy and organization. Whatever their origins, Mohists soon came to be known first and foremost as thinkers. Mozi, the sole surviving repository of Mohist teachings, is extensive and is best understood as a school text. The core of the book is a sequence of what were originally thirty chapters advancing ten basic credos: “Exalting Worthies,” “Upward Conformity,” “Impartial Love,” “Objecting to [Military] Aggression,” “Moderating Expenditure,” “Moderating Funerals,” “The Will of Heaven,” “Clarifying Ghosts,” “Objecting to Music,” and “Objecting to Fatalism.”

In this chapter two substantial textual assemblages of Sumerian literary compositions from Ur and Nippur (two major urban centres in southern Mesopotamia in the late third and early second millennium) are described and compared to address the question of the extent to which assemblages such as these can be considered textual archives or libraries. Particular emphasis is given to the types of compositions that are found in the two assemblages, as well as to how the archaeological contexts in which the assemblages were discovered and the material aspects of the texts themselves (the format and layout of the clay tablets on which the compositions were copied) might shed light on how and why the texts in these assemblages were copied (and possibly archived) as a group.

This chapter argues that the Gilgamesh Epic underwent several phases of revision through introduction. First, the old Huwawa narrative was taken up and supplemented with a large block at the front. This is suggested by contrasts between Tablets II and III of the Old Babylonian Epic. A second act of revision through introduction pertains to the prologues. Typically, the first twenty-eight lines of the Standard Babylonian Epic have been seen as a secondary addition. This chapter argues that a school text from Ugarit may provide evidence of a prior phase in the development of the prologue. Finally, this chapter examines the addition of “Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld” to the end of the Standard Babylonian Epic, a move that involved the omission of the first 170 lines of the old Sumerian tale. It closes with reference to the oft-overlooked allusion to the Gilgamesh prologue in Psalm 48.