Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- PART I ARCHAIC AND CLASSICAL GREECE
- PART II THE HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN WORLDS
- 20 Introduction: the Hellenistic and Roman periods
- 21 The Cynics
- 22 Epicurean and Stoic political thought
- 23 Kings and constitutions: Hellenistic theories
- 24 Cicero
- 25 Reflections of Roman political thought in Latin historical writing
- 26 Seneca and Pliny
- 27 Platonism and Pythagoreanism in the early empire
- 28 Josephus
- 29 Stoic writers of the imperial era
- 30 The Jurists
- 31 Christianity
- Epilogue
- Bibliographies
- Index
- Map 1. Greece in the fifth century bc"
- References
29 - Stoic writers of the imperial era
from PART II - THE HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN WORLDS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- PART I ARCHAIC AND CLASSICAL GREECE
- PART II THE HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN WORLDS
- 20 Introduction: the Hellenistic and Roman periods
- 21 The Cynics
- 22 Epicurean and Stoic political thought
- 23 Kings and constitutions: Hellenistic theories
- 24 Cicero
- 25 Reflections of Roman political thought in Latin historical writing
- 26 Seneca and Pliny
- 27 Platonism and Pythagoreanism in the early empire
- 28 Josephus
- 29 Stoic writers of the imperial era
- 30 The Jurists
- 31 Christianity
- Epilogue
- Bibliographies
- Index
- Map 1. Greece in the fifth century bc"
- References
Summary
Introduction
This chapter discusses four leading intellectuals in the first and second centuries ad. Their surviving or reported work (together with that of Seneca) provides points of access to the form that political thought took in a period in which there is no extant text that deals, in an obvious and systematic way, with political philosophy. These figures are interconnected in various ways. Musonius Rufus (c. 30–c. 101, these and all subsequent dates ad) taught both Dio Chrysostom (c. 40–c. 112) and Epictetus (c. 55–c. 135). The Stoic notebook (Meditations) of the emperor Marcus Aurelius (121–80) is avowedly influenced by Epictetus’ Discourses; and his version of Stoic theory is broadly similar to that of Epictetus and Musonius. Dio Chrysostom differs from the others in combining the roles of philosopher and ‘sophist’ (public speech-maker), and in his philosophical eclecticism. But a significant element in the thought of his speeches is Stoic (of a type comparable with that of the other three thinkers); he also sometimes deploys the Stoicized Cynicism that appears in Epictetus.
The lives and thought of these individuals illustrate certain more general features of the period. Dio Chrysostom was a leading figure in the so-called ‘Second Sophistic’ movement; and his career displays how sophists, as public performers, functioned as intellectual communicators and as vehicles of Greco–Roman culture throughout the (Greek-speaking) Eastern part of the Roman empire. More broadly, the careers of all four men exhibit the interlinking of Greek and Roman intellectual (and political) life, and the interplay between philosophy and politics in the period.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought , pp. 597 - 615Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000
References
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