My title is an ambitious one, and defines a field which is more suitable for a book than for a single lecture, and which has the added disadvantage that it crosses the boundaries between a number of disciplines: history, science, philosophy, and technology. Anyone who chooses such a theme is in danger of being told by those well-versed in the individual disciplines that his knowledge of each of them is inadequate; which may well be true, and is certainly true of me. But cross-disciplinary exploration is in itself a desirable activity; and if a few explorers perish in the process no great harm is done, and others may follow their example more successfully. I should not, however, in saying this, like it to be thought that I am claiming any great novelty for what I shall say to you today. Little of my material is new; all I can hope to do is to suggest to you a particular interpretation of it.

In very general terms, the physical scientist is concerned to identify and define certain regularities in the material world, and to embody them in laws or theories which both furnish an explanation of them and enable him to predict and to some extent to control particular kinds of future event. It is noticeable at once that the elements of prediction and control are largely absent from Greek speculation, and this is due partly to certain of its inherent characteristics (to which I return in a moment), and partly to its lack of three further particular features which are an essential part of the natural sciences today. These are briefly that they are experimental, quantitative, and laboratory-based. This generalization is, of course, at once too wide and too narrow. Not all scientific theories rely on experiment in the narrow sense or on laboratory operations; the observations of the astronomer and the activities of the field-biologist can, up to a point, dispense with both. But it remains true that the experimental test and the laboratory and its instruments are essential elements in modern science, and neither the astronomer nor the biologist can in the last resort dispense with them. Similarly, quantitative measurement plays an indispensable role in the physical sciences and is the basis on which they have been built up, even though the theoretical physicist may spend little time measuring or experimenting and be mainly concerned with the mathematical analysis which is so vital an element in modern physical theory.

Juvenal's rhetorical recipe is characteristically simple: a finelychiselled sententia to summarize the chilly treatment accorded to honest men, followed by a catalogue in asyndeton of the luxuries which come as the rewards of wickedness. The impact of the passage does not depend on the precise details of the items listed: in consequence it is hardly surprising that commentators have been lax in their duty over the last five words of line 76, and left the picture blurred when regard for a well-known art-fashion would have instantly sharpened the focus. Thus Friedländer, as conscientious as he was unimaginative, tells us (ad loc.) that Juvenal meant a cup adorned with a goat in high relief (‘einen Pokal mit einem Bock in Hochrelief’). The usually more percipient Duff acquiesces, while Mayor, Ruperti, and the rest chime in with words of similar import. Passages to show that the verb exstare is appropriate to describe relief-work are duly paraded: Ovid, Met. v. 80–2 has altis exstantem signis … cratera, and in a later book of the same poem (xii. 235–6) signis exstantibus asper / antiquus crater: Martial may also be cited to the same effect (viii. 51.9, al.).

In the Choephoroi and the Eumenides Aeschylus has described curious and repellent characters, composite beings who partake of the nature and appearance of old women, dogs, Gorgons, Harpies, and aged children, creatures of a compound well able to fright and amaze the original audience. But if a modern theatrical director were to ask, ‘What did they look like? How shall I dress them and have them masked?’, it might be too easy to allow his wardrobe mistress a gallop into phantasy, whereas it is almost as easy to give a simple, if less exhilaratingly imaginative, answer. Aeschylus describes the Erinyes as follows:

Choephoroi

like Gorgons, 1048; φαιοχ⋯τωνες, 1049; wreathed about with snakes, 1049–50; with blood dripping from their eyes, 1058.