The pregnant phrase fatale monstrum comes at a crucial point in the third and longest of the three sentences of the ‘Cleopatra Ode’. Before it Cleopatra is being hissed from the stage of history with cries of disapproval; after it she is recalled to receive plaudit after plaudit for her courage and resolution. The phrase is emphasized by its position at the start of a stanza followed by a marked pause. Prima facie it is the climax of the vituperation, and has often so been taken. T. E. Page, for example, comments: ‘Horace speaks of Cleopatra as not human, but a hideous and portentous creature sent by destiny to cause horror and alarm.’

MR. R. G. M. Nisbet has made the attractive suggestion that the Vinnius to whom Horace addressed his thirteenth epistle was the Vinnius Valens mentioned by the elder Pliny as a centurion of immense strength who had served in the praetorian guard of Augustus (N.H. 7. 82). To the points which he has made in support of this identification may be added the appropriateness, if Horace's Vinnius was a soldier, of the words victor propositi (II) and the fact that Horace's comparison between Vinnius and a pack-animal gains in point if Vinnius was famous for feats of strength involving wagons and beasts of burden.

At the beginning of Book 5 Plato catalogues the ways in which men ‘dishonour’ ( 727 c 3) their souls, and at 728 ab sums up by saying that any man who does not practise what the lawgiver describes as noble and good is treating his soul dishonourably. He goes on to say that hardly anyone takes account of (728 b 2), which is to cut oneself off from good men and be completely assimilated to the bad (6). We the n read (c 2 + ):

When the theory of Forms was first developed by Plato, it was the final stage of a series of philosophical investigations which began with Socrates' search for definitions. The Form was regarded as a ‘one over many’ that is separate from particulars. It is by their participation in the perfect Form that the particulars derive their transitory existence. There is a Form, according to the Republic (596 a 5–7) corresponding to every set of things that have a common name. There are Forms of moral qualities, mathematical entities, and material objects. In the Parmenides Socrates admits that he is in doubt whether there are Forms of Man, Fire, and Water (130 c), but by the time of the Timaeus (51 b) Plato has no doubts about Forms of the four elements, and in the Philebus (15 a) he accepted a Form of Man also. This fact is well known to Aristotle, who speaks of Man as a typical Form at E.N. 1096b1. Finally, we may add that regress arguments, such as that about the Form of Largeness at Parmenides 132 ab, were generally referred to in antiquity as Third Man arguments—arguments, that is, which used the Form of Man as a paradigm for Forms in general.