In the last section of this study, we place popular morality in a number of wider contexts, comparing it with the landscape of philosophical ethics and ethics in documents of various kinds. In this chapter, the wider context is that of miscellanies in general, and we shift focus from the content of morality to the form in which it was presented, in particular to those who could read.

Most people in the Empire doubtless picked up sayings and stories by hearing them used, everywhere from the kitchen to the council chamber via the marketplace and the parade ground. As a way of acquiring knowledge, this must have been, as it still is, a rather hit-or-miss affair, some people learning plenty of stories and tags, and others few. Seneca's observation, which we have amply confirmed, that many sayings and stories make essentially the same point, must have helped: if one happened never to hear a harsh, unpleasant man criticized as an ‘Areopagite’, one might come across the essentially synonymous, ‘rough as a hedgehog’.

For those who could read there was another route to knowledge. Stories and sayings were available in quantity, often more or less helpfully arranged by genre, theme, author or initial letter.