Hannibal and Scipio left no autobiographies, except that Hannibal in 205, before leaving Italy for Africa, inscribed a bilingual account of his military resources. Scipio’s contemporary funeral elogium (list of his offices and achievements, a kind of succinct obituary) does not survive (a much later one does). This chapter offers, by way of introduction, semi-fictional replacements for these missing documents and explains what Hannibal’s full inscription is likely to have contained. Other first-person evidence by the two men is quoted and discussed, such as letters reported in the literary sources. The chapter closes by asking what Hannibal and Scipio looked like. Appendix 1.1 lists and evaluates the sources for the book, and there is a sub-section on reliability of speeches. Appendix 1.2 addresses the problem of whether Plutarch’s lost Life of Scipio was about Hannibal’s opponent or Scipio Aemilianus, his younger relative by adoption. Appendix 1.3 is about ‘roving anecdotes’.

The Hannibal of this book is Hannibal surnamed Barca. Scipio is Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus. The final extra name (‘the African’) was given to him in recognition of his victory over Hannibal in north Africa. The Prologue explains that the model for this joint biograohy of Hannibal and Scipio is not so much Plutarch’s series of parallel Greek and Roman lives, as Alan Bullock’s Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives. Ancient, Renaissance, and modern explorations of the parallels between the two men are discussed, and a separate section sketches the career and approach of Bullock as a classically trained modern historian and biographer. Another section sets out programmatically the view of Roman and Carthaginian imperialism to be adopted in the book. The limitations of the evidence available to biographers of individuals from the ancient world are candidly acknowledged, and the use of the ‘past presumptive’ tense (so-and so- ‘will have’ done, known, or thought this or that) is renounced.

Although there is no equivalent term for ‘essay’ in either Greek or Latin, ancient literature was instrumental to the development of the English essay in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in three principal ways. First, some classical prose works provided stylistic models for early English essayists. Second, some ancient authors (Seneca in particular) processed information in a way that resonated with later essay writers; even if there were not ancient essayists, there were ancient ways of reading and writing that were fundamentally essayistic. And finally, the essay became one of the principal ways that readers gained access to ancient texts and ideas.

This chapter discusses Plutarch’s On the Oracles at Delphi, and in particular the account of the grammarian Theon as to how prose came to replace verse, not just in the delivery of the Delphic oracle, but in literary discourse as a whole. Theon’s account of the history of Greek literate culture is an important document of how learned Greeks in the Roman empire imagined how their world had changed, along with the literature in which it was represented. The first part of the chapter considers another Plutarchan account of cultural and intellectual change, namely the opening of On the Obsolescence of Oracles, which tells the foundation story of Delphi. Both texts lay weight upon the fact of change itself, rather than on any detailed plotting of that change, let alone a chronology for it; so too, both illustrate a tendency to see recurrent patterns of change, by which the outlines of Greek literary history are found already adumbrated in classical literature itself. Among the classical texts which are central to this appropriation of past models are the programmatic chapters of Thucydides and Aristotle’s account of the development of poetic language.

Experience is the cornerstone of Epicurean philosophy and nowhere is this more apparent than in the Epicurean views about the nature, formation, and application of concepts. ‘The Epicureans on Preconceptions and Other Concepts’ by Gábor Betegh and Voula Tsouna aims to piece together the approach to concepts suggested by Epicurus and his early associates, trace its historical development over a period of approximately five centuries, compare it with competing views, and highlight the philosophical value of the Epicurean account on that subject. It is not clear whether, properly speaking, the Epicureans can be claimed to have a theory about concepts. However, an in-depth discussion of the relevant questions will show that the Epicureans advance a coherent if elliptical explanation of the nature and formation of concepts and of their epistemological and ethical role. Also, the chapter establishes that, although the core of the Epicurean account remains fundamentally unaffected, there are shifts of emphasis and new developments marking the passage from one generation of Epicureans to another and from one era to the next.

The Conclusion uses the downfall of Nero to consider the legacy of the body politic metaphor in Roman political thought. Julio-Claudian writers relied on the duality of head and body to express fears about the recurrence of civil war. Without a head to command Rome’s warring limbs, they argued, Rome would return to its ancestral cycle of self-destruction. The Year of the Four Emperors confirmed the prescience of their warnings. Plutarch and Tacitus relied on symbolism of a headless body politic to describe the conflict, confirming their perception of sole rule as necessary if not ideal. This contest for power therefore did not weaken the Principate so much as confirm its viability as an institution independent of its Augustan origins. With the rise of the Flavians came the formalization of both sole rule and the Imperial model of the body politic for centuries to come.

B 115 is generally regarded as the reference fragment of Empedocles’ doctrine of rebirth, being the place where he presents himself as a god banished from the divine community as a result of certain crimes, sent into exile on our earth and here condemned to be reborn as all kinds of mortal beings. In Chapter 1 I argue that, contrary to the vast majority of editions of Empedocles’ fragments, B 115 belongs to the incipit of his physical poem. The chapter mostly focuses on the Strasbourg papyrus and the evidence it uncovered that is relevant to the question of the character and content of the physical poem. After questioning the basis on which scholars have placed B 115 within the Purifications, I will show that the Strasbourg papyrus provides strong proof for its allocation within On Nature. The relocation of this central fragment thus sets the stage for a re-evaluation of Empedocles’ physical system in its entirety, by indicating that it consists of mythical and religious themes in synergy with more strictly physical principles.

Chapter 3 focuses on δαίμων and its significance in Empedocles’ concept of rebirth. I show that the demonological fragments and the term δαίμων, in particular, emphasize Empedocles’ divine nature in contrast to the rest of humankind and cannot represent, as is generally believed, the place where his personal vicissitude becomes exemplary of every soul’s destiny, thus grounding his doctrine of rebirth. To define what Empedocles intended when he called himself a reincarnated δαίμων, I analyze Plato’s myths of the soul’s otherworldly journeys and some fragments attesting to Pythagoras’ demonology. While Plato, in his concept of rebirth, conceptualized the δαίμονες as deities who guide souls during and beyond this life, Pythagoras articulated the idea that a god could exceptionally undergo rebirths, but these are usually reserved for ordinary souls. Following Pythagoras and anticipating Plato, Empedocles constructs his demonology which is linked, but does not overlap, with his doctrine of rebirth. Finally, addressing the issue of the ‘physical’ δαίμων in B 59 I argue that δαίμων is a predicative notion which, in all Empedoclean occurrences, is still intimately connected to the traditional sense of ‘god’.

Plutarch devotes two speeches and a biography specifically to Alexander. Current scholarship prioritizes the author over his subject. The erudite Plutarch employs numerous Alexander sources for his own writerly purposes. In the speeches he argues that Alexander’s successes are due to his own efforts rather than gifted by fortune. It is to be doubted that Plutarch had a serious polemical or philosophical point to prove; his epideictic oratory aims at rhetorical display and furnishing evidence from ready knowledge. The Life is similarly moulded by generic requirements. Plutarch provides an episodic birth-to-death account of Alexander, in which he presents himself as a competent interpreter and adviser. He quotes early sources, in particular from a collection of letters by Alexander, to render his depiction more authentic. Focusing on the ‘signs of the soul’, Plutarch is most interested in court politics and personal morals. His Alexander is determined by his physical make-up and greatness of soul on the one hand, and how effectively education and philosophy direct his ambition on the other. His biography is not apologetic; rather he wishes to educate his readership on how personal morality impacts on governance. References to his own context, if at all present, are oblique.

The chapter collects what may be known of Alexander’s life up until the battle of Chaeronea, for which the source of primary importance is Plutarch’s biography. It attempts to sift what may plausibly regarded as historical from embellishments of various kinds (contemporary and subsequent, propagandist, folkloric or mythologyzing). Particular attention is given to: Alexander’s three birth myths; his education at the hands of Lysimachus of Acarnania, Leonidas of Epirus and Aristotle; Aeschines’ vignette of him as nine-year-old boy; the intriguing traditions bearing upon his horse Bucephalas; his regency during the Byzantine campaign, his foundation of Alexandropolis and his dealings with the Persian ambassadors; his role in the battle at Chaeronea.

Chapter 5 turns the spotlight on the rather overlooked treatise Exhortation to the Study of Medicine. It argues that in this work Galen constructs or conjures up images of young readers, intending it to act as an educational manual in moral intensification for prospective medical students. It hence demonstrates how Galen’s concern for his reader’s acculturation might explain the appropriation of advice and the selection of relevant material from a long-established protreptic tradition. In discussing Galen’s moralising methods and the pedagogical elements of the essay, this Chapter also draws links between Galenic and Plutarchan moralism, dealt with in detail for the first time, and thereby arguing that Galen’s moral writings need to be construed in the light of Imperial-period practical ethics. That proposition receives further support from the special features of Galen’s protreptic discourse discussed in this Chapter, especially practicability and effectiveness resulting from the author’s philosophical leanings (e.g. his Platonic-Aristotelian background) and medical expertise (the mechanics of the body and his emulation of Hippocrates in the second part of the essay).

Chapter 4 examines Galen’s credentials as an ethical philosopher in the light of his recently discovered essay Avoiding Distress. It argues that his moral agenda which is expanded upon here makes him an active participant in the practical ethics of the High Roman Empire, with a more profound attentiveness to popular philosophy than is usually admitted. Galen’s dialogue with what has been termed ‘Stoic psychotherapy’ and the Platonic-Aristotelian educational model helps build up his ethical influence through an engagement with the past. On the other hand, his individual characteristics, such as the autobiographical perspective of his narrative and the intimacy established between author and addressee, render Avoiding Distress exceptional among essays (whether Greek or Latin) treating anxiety, especially when compared to the tracts on mental tranquillity written by Seneca and Plutarch. Another distinctive element of the treatise is that Galen’s self-projection as a therapist of the emotions corresponds to his role as a practising physician as regards the construction of authority and the importance of personal experience.

The author checks the firmness of the foundations of the negative appraisal of the historian Ephorus. Topics include Ephorus’ Isocratean apprenticeship, the concept of rhetorical historiography, Ephorus and Diodorus, ancient judgements questioning Ephorus’ reliability as a historian, Ephorus’ ‘Cymocentrism’.

Divination was an important focus of philosophical dialogue and ‘pagan’-Christian religious debates in late antiquity.One of the most extensive late antique exchanges on the nature of divination and other religious practices is that evident in Porphyry’s Letter to Anebo and Iamblichus’ Reply of the Master Abamon to the Letter of Porphyry to Anebo and the Solutions to the Questions It Contains. This chapter re-assesses the key features of this exchange, arguing for its status as an important philosophical dialogue which bears some resemblance to oracular modes of discourse. In order to support this argument, the broader status of questioning, interrogation, and inquiry in traditional Greek oracular practices and within Platonism is examined. The chapter analyses the ways in which Porphyry’s and Iamblichus’ exchange is framed within these philosophical and oracular contexts, demonstrating that this dialogue draws implicitly on Socrates’ interrogation of the Delphic oracle as presented in Plato’s Apology and on Plutarch’s Delphic Dialogues. The citation and discussion of Porphyry’s Letter to Anebo by the Christian Church Fathers Eusebius and Augustine will also be considered in relation to exploring pagan-Christian religious approaches and debates.

This chapter surveys Greek writing of 31 BC–AD 270 that might have impinged on the novels, or been somehow influenced by them. In 31 BC–AD 50, before any known novels, little that might have impacted a novelist writing in AD 50 can be seen in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Nicolaus of Damascus or Strabo, or in hexameter poetry: but erotic epigrams, especially those of Rufinus (writing ca. AD 40–60, apparently in Asia Minor near the novels’ birthplace), may have caught novelists’ eyes. In AD 50–160 sophistic rhetoric’s explosion encouraged fictionality in declamation and in the imaginative scenarios of Dio’s Euboean, Trojan and Borysthenitic speeches. An erotic theme was central to the Araspas, lover of Pantheia, by Dionysius of Miletus or Caninius Celer. Plutarch comes near to a mini-novel in his story of young Bacchon’s kidnapping in his Ἐρωτικός, and many Lives have novelistic cliff-hanging incidents. Achilles Tatius’ ‘scientific’ digressions chime with the popularity of paradoxography (Pamphila, Phlegon, and Favorinus). Between 160–220 Iamblichus’ Babyloniaca and Aelian’s Histories show paradoxography’s continued popularity; Lucian plays games with fictionality and himself wrote a novel. Pausanias, Athenaeus and Philostratus present tales of desire in a way improbable in a world without novels. Discussion of Heliodorus’ relation to other literature dominates assessment of AD 220–270.

Plutarch’s biographies often – not always – come close to modern expectations of a “biography,” so much so that it is easy to lose track of how many choices he had to make and how many alternative paths he might have chosen. This chapter compares those choices with those made by other ancient life-writers and measures them against “ten rules for biography” outlined for modern authors by Hermione Lee: (1) The story should be true. (2) The story should cover the whole life. (3) Nothing should be omitted or concealed. (4) All sources used should be identified. (5) The biographer should know the subject. (6) The biographer should be objective. (7) Biography is a form of history. (8) Biography is an investigation of identity. (9) The story should have some value for the reader. (10) There are no rules for biography.

Plutarch’s various comments about wealth are usually recognizable as springing from the same personality, but the emphasis is different in different contexts. This chapter explores this variety within the Lives, and in particular the characteristic connection with moral decadence and decay. Two pairs are explored as test-cases, Agis–Cleomenes–Gracchi and Agesilaus–Pompey. Rome, with signs of luxury and decadence everywhere, might be expected to be particularly in focus, but talk of decadence is most frequent in the Spartan Lives. Is this an indirect way of passing comment on Rome without causing offense That may also explain his frequent reluctance to talk as openly about Roman corruption and bribery as one might expect, especially in connection with a Life’s central figure. He may also be sidestepping too great an emphasis on Roman luxury as this had traditionally been associated with the Greek East.