Socrates' Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything: Explaining the Arithmetical Riddles of AP 14

Abstract

Abstract:Book 14 of the Palatine Anthology comprises, alongside proper riddles and oracles, forty-five arithmetical epigrams. Long underrated as poetry, these deserve to be reappraised in light of a recent trend of unmasking a complex cultural agenda of ancient scientific literature. By focusing on two particularly elaborate epigrams (AP 14.1 and 4), this discussion sets out to explore these poems' self-aware engagement with various literary and cultural traditions. I argue that as poetry as much as pieces of an arithmological jigsaw puzzle, these are vehicles for an intricate, if not entirely serious, Platonizing and neo-Pythagorean program of uniting poetry and mathematics.