This chapter is about Greek culture, but there is a political aspect too: Hannibal promised freedom to Italian Greeks, but not all welcomed him, nor were his promises kept. Scipio at Syracuse enjoyed Greek lifestyle, including attending the gymnasium, an institution suspect among Romans for perceived immorality; but it had a paramilitary function, especially in Sicily. Scipio’s promotion of south Italian Greeks is illustrated by the career of Sextus Digitius from Paestum. Hannibal’s command of Greek is discussed (also in Appendix 13.1, on Greek ‘letters’, taught him by Spartan Sosylus). After enduring an Athenian philosopher lecturing at Ephesus on generalship he expressed impatience in frank if inelegant Greek. Religious and cultural hellenism at Rome and Carthage is explored, with special attention to Livius Andronicus’ invention of a Latin literature, and the Carthaginian philosopher Hasdrubal, self-reinvented as ‘Clitomachus’. Barcid Iberian city foundations are assessed, Hannibal’s in Asia Minor postponed to Chapter 17.

According to Aristotle, character or ethos in tragedy is ’that which reveals what the moral choice is like’. This kind of ethos is what this book explores in Sophocles, by examining five tragedies in which moral choice is central to the course of the drama. These choices are made within the context of traditional Greek morality, which, amongst other things, expected one to help one’s friends and harm one’s enemies. Closely allied to these principles is the conception of justice as retaliation. This nexus of principles provides a pervasive ethical background to most of Greek literature and is of special significance for tragedy.

Greek popular thought is pervaded by the assumption that one should help one’s friends and harm one’s enemies. These fundamental principles surface continually from Homer onwards and survive well into the Roman period, and indeed to the present day, especially in international relations. They are firmly based on observation of human nature, which yields the conclusion that most human beings do in fact desire to help their friends and harm their enemies, and derive satisfaction from such behaviour. Thus Xenophon’s Socrates can count benefiting friends and defeating enemies as one of the things which bring the ’greatest pleasures’.

This chapter analyzes the concept of distress and its application into climate matters. Distress emerges as a broad concept with many connotations. There are so many similarities between climate distress and climate anxiety as broad concepts that they may be used almost interchangeably, but when these phenomena are more carefully scrutinized, a wide vocabulary of various mental states and emotions is required. The history of the usage of climate distress is provided. The role of power dynamics in the usages is explored. Contextual factors are discussed, especially in relation to various cultures and languages. Related dynamics are explored via the example of discourses about climate distress in Finland and Sweden. It is argued that care is needed in analyzing the usage of concepts by various authors. The dual character of climate distress as both a potential mental health issue and fundamentally an adaptive reaction is highlighted.

Plato’s Gorgias is often framed as a quarrel between rhetoric and philosophy, conceived as two ways of life. I suggest a refinement of the traditional framing: the dialogue requires discernment rather than choice. The reader must distinguish the real life from the illusory alternative, a task whose difficulty Plato intensifies by bringing to the fore the striking resemblances between rhetoric and philosophy. These resemblances lead to the realization that each side has a story about how it is the genuine article. Further, from a neutral vantage point, the dialogue leaves the two possibilities identically placed. In doing so, the Gorgias expresses a sense of the limitations of argument shorn of commitment to guiding normative principles. But Plato’s text also suggests the possibility of progress if, like Socrates, one is willing to stake one’s engagement on the presence of similar antecedent commitments within one’s interlocutor, however deeply rooted.

There is a difference between being a philosopher and mastering the technical aspects of philosophy. The technician is at home with axioms and abstract problems. Although the philosopher can weave his way through apparently pathless conundra, the conundra are not the philosopher’s home; his home is reality: the τὸ τί ἐστι (being of things) that tend toward ὁ ἀγαθός (the good) and ἡ ἀλήθεια (the truth). When Boethius was unjustly condemned to death, he was a blind man when it came to reality: despite his technical prowess, he was stumped by the problem of evil. The Consolatio is an account of the ascent of the mind of a technician imprisoned by the painful experience of injustice to the mind of the philosopher who can see Providence at work in creation.

Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, a philosophical dialogue in the “prosimetric” or mixed form (prose and poetry), has attracted broad literary and philosophical readerships in both the Latin West and Greek East from the ninth century on. The two readerships, however, have not regularly overlapped or engaged with one another in their respective efforts to interpret the work. The purposes of this study are to enable a more informed appreciation of the philosophical implications of its more “literary” books (I–II) and the literary significance of its more transparently philosophical ones (III–V), and to bring its overall architecture into clearer focus. To these ends, a case is made at the outset for the complete state of the transmitted text of the work.

Plato’s Gorgias presents philosophy as primarily the Socratic elenchos as practiced in large swathes of the Gorgias and other elenctic dialogues. So understood, unlike rhetoric, philosophy promotes the just life by encouraging the pursuit of knowledge necessary for the just life by eliminating the false conceit of believing that one already possesses it. This is not the only way the elenchos can promote the just life. Nor is philosophy only displayed in its elenctic form in the dialogue. Nevertheless, philosophy’s elenctic ability to encourage the pursuit of knowledge necessary for the just life by eliminating one’s false conceit of having it is a principal way in which Plato takes philosophy to promote the just life in the Gorgias. In this way, the victory of the just life over the unjust life grounds the victory of philosophy over rhetoric.

Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy was one of the most influential texts in medieval Europe. Yet it does not receive enough attention in contemporary scholarship on medieval philosophy. This is in part explained by the content and literary form of the Consolation. The direct influence of Plato and late antique Neoplatonism, the dialogue form, the alternating prose and poetry sections, and the wealth of references to classical literature and mythology contrast sharply with the sort of texts most contemporary scholars of medieval philosophy focus on. The essays in this volume tackle these interpretive challenges and reveal some of the rich philosophical insights the Consolation offers. Chapters 1–3 directly address its literary features and their philosophical significance. Chapters 4 and 5 consider the relationship between the Consolation and Boethius’ Christianity. Chapters 6–8 offer three different takes on the philosophy of selfhood, or philosophical anthropology, so central to the Consolation. Chapters 9–13 deal with the more standard metaphysical and theological issues, such as Boethius’ accounts of goodness, being, God, time, eternity, and human freedom.

Recognition of Boethius’ Philosophia as allegorical personification is critical for understanding the positive portrayal given her in the Consolatio. It explains the elaborate identifying markers given in metaphorical reference to the lady as nurse, physician, and teacher. It also helps to explain her ontological status as a source of inspiration for “the prisoner.” This chapter notes her pedagogical strategy in consolation for a patient and compassionate approach, demonstrating feminine qualities that effectively balance the rigorous argument by which she finally moves the prisoner from despair to renewed hope and dignity.

Chapter 20 reflects on Goethe’s unique way of thinking and his persistent challenges to orthodoxy. It builds on Goethe’s own assertion that he was ‘not naturally equipped to do philosophy in its proper sense’, and argues that his thought engages the figurative power of ‘improper’ (that is, poetic) language to do philosophical work. The chapter notes his criticism of the modes of, among others, Kant and Hegel, and highlights places in Goethe’s oeuvre, including in his literary works, where we can see new and unconventional pathways for thought being built.