Preliminary considerations

The Platonism of the first centuries of the empire does not constitute a single current of thought, still less the work of a school. To refer to Platonist authors from the time of Eudorus (active c. 25 bc) until the rise of Neoplatonism the term ‘Middle Platonism’ is often employed: a historiographical category which poses considerable problems. There is not in fact any single Middle Platonist philosophy, but rather a group of writers who may be described as Platonist by virtue of their allegiance to a nucleus of ‘orthodox’ positions, contaminated in many instances by Aristotelian and Stoic doctrines, and not the same nucleus in all cases. That is true for political thought too. The authors of most interest from this point of view, Philo of Alexandria (20/15 bc– ad 45/50) and Plutarch of Chaeronea (ad 45–100), despite sharing features in common, stand far apart from each other. For the political thought of other Platonists of the period we do not have sufficient evidence, but there is nothing to suggest political theories of any great originality or with significant contemporary impact. The consolidation of Rome’s supremacy on the world stage in the first centuries of the empire certainly did not provide favourable conditions for theoretical political thought to flourish: the apparent inevitability of Roman domination limited the scope for political reflection. It tended to oscillate between wary pragmatism and purely theoretical idealism.