Storia della Filosofia Romana

Speranza

Since the eighteenth century the Roman philosophers have been under-estimated by those whose academic opinion-makers have generally included them in Swift’s “Gleanings of Philoso-phy…the Lumber of the Schools”. The group of Oxford scholars led by Miriam Griffin and Jonathan Barnes, who published the two volumes of Philosophia Togata were in part atoning for the former indifference of the Oxford school of Litterae Humaniores towards philosophers of the nineteen centuries between Aristotle and Descartes. In the years after World War II, lectures were given onPlato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, but the Hellenistic schools of philosophy were ignored, as were the philosophical works of Cicero and Seneca, to say nothing of later philosophers in the Roman world. Lucretius was read as a Latin text rather than as a thinker, and from Augustine only the chapters on Time in the eleventh book of the Confessions were thought to be worth discussing.

Thingswere no doubt less bleak at Cambridge and in other universities inFrance, the United States and Germany, where the record of Mommsen’s contempt for Cicero most certainly needed to be erased.

Since I was one of “the hungry sheep who look up and are not fed”at Oxford, I have found the writing of this book both challenging and fulfilling, and I am grateful to Richard Stoneman, kindest of editors,for his invitation to undertake the task and for his patience as deadlinesfaded into the future.

The aim of a history of Ancient Roman philosophy should be of to provide a concise, but not superficial, surveyof the writings and ideas of the principal philosophers in the Romanworld from the middle of the second century BCE down to the death of Marcus Aurelius in 180 CE.

I have read or reread all the philosophical writings of the philosophers discussed, with the exception of Plutarch,the sheer mass of whose Moralia
would discourage all but the mostdedicated Plutarchians.

In surveying the ideas of these authors I haveincluded more quotations than is usual in books of this sort, and all thetranslations are my own.

While I realize that many readers will havelittle Latin and less Greek, I have often included Greek or Latin termsand phrases as a corrective to their less exact English equivalents.Past neglect has been more than compensated for in the explosion of publications in this field during the last twenty-five years. I am deeply indebted to the work of pioneers who have made Hellenistic philoso-phy available to a wider readership, most notably A.A.Long in hisintroductory book,Hellenistic Philosophy, and, with David Sedley, in the indispensable two-volume collection of texts,
The Hellenistic Philosophers,. I regret that hisEpictetus: a Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life (New York: Oxford Uni-versity Press) appeared too late for me to use. Wolfgang Haase has performed a heroic feat in editing the seven volumes of Aufstiegund Niedergang der romischen Welt
II. 36, of which volume 3,devoted to the Stoics, is especially useful for those concerned withRoman philosophers. The volume on
Stoics,Epicureans and Sceptics by R.W.Sharpies, published in this series by Routledge in 1996, willmore than compensate readers for the philosophical shortcomings of my book. Yet there has been little published in English with the samescope and goals as those of the present book. Elizabeth Rawson’s excel-lent book on Intellectual Life in the Roman Republic
has a rather different range and is limited to the period of theRoman Republic. Even the chapters on philosophy and ideas in thesecond edition of the
Cambridge Ancient History are tantalizinglysummary, and the second volume of the Cambridge History of Classi-cal Literature is usually and distressingly dismissive of Roman thought.

Besides being indebted to earlier authors I am profoundly grateful tomany teachers, colleagues and friends.

Isobel Henderson, tutor inRoman History at Oxford, opened a few minds to the exciting possibilitiesof Roman history and culture, and John Lucas more than compensatedfor the thin diet of the public offerings for Oxford undergraduates byhis patient exposition of Plato and other philosophers as we trampedmany, many miles over the Berkshire downs.

I am grateful to him alsofor timely encouragement when, fifty years later, I was tangled in thethickets of Cicero’s epistemology.

I have learned more than I can sayfrom the students whom I have been privileged to teach in seminars onTacitus, Lucan, and Roman Stoicism, not least David George at OhioState University and David Mehl at the University of Virginia. At Ohio State I enjoyed two decades of friendship and discussion with CharlesBabcock and David Hahm, and with Carl Schlam, whose memory will,I hope, be honoured by this book.

I owe a special debt of gratitude to Miriam Griffin, who read thewhole of the first draft and offered many searching criticisms and cor-rections. She helped me particularly with references to works previ-ously unknown or unavailable to me, all of which have helped meimprove the book. I am more than grateful for her generosity.Finally, I owe a deep debt of thanks to the colleagues who have sogenerously welcomed me into the Smith College community. JustinaGregory, Craig Felton and Martin Antonetti gave me warm encourage-ment in adversity.

Their support and the resources of the libraries of Smith College and Amherst College have made the labour of writingthe book a pleasure.