Philosophy in the Roman Empire: Ethics, Politics and Society

300 Pages·2007·3.047 MB·English

by  Michael B. Trapp

PhilosoPhy in the roman emPire
Drawing on unusually broad range of sources for this study of imperial period
philosophical thought, michael trapp examines the central issues of personal
morality, political theory, and social organization: philosophy as the pursuit of self-
improvement and happiness; the conceptualization and management of emotion;
attitudes and obligations to others; ideas of the self and personhood; constitutional
theory and the ruler; the constituents and working of the good community.
texts and thinkers discussed range from alexander of aphrodisias, aspasius and
alcinous, via hierocles, seneca, musonius, epictetus, Plutarch and Diogenes of
oenoanda, to Dio Chrysostom, apuleius, lucian, maximus of tyre, Pythagorean
pseudepigrapha, and the Tablet of Cebes. the distinctive doctrines of the individual
philosophical schools are outlined, but also the range of choice that collectively they
presented to the potential philosophical ‘convert’, and the contexts in which that
choice was encountered.
Finally trapp turns his attention to the status of philosophy itself as an element of
the elite culture of the period, and to the ways in which philosophical values may
have posed a threat to other prevalent schemes of value; trapp argues that the idea
of ‘philosophical opposition’, though useful, needs to be substantially modified and
extended.
To NGD, SWBT and NWBT
Philosophy in the roman empire
ethics, Politics and society
miChael traPP
Kings College London, UK
First published 2007 by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2016 by Routledge
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Copyright © 2007 michael trapp
michael trapp has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
trapp, michael B.
Philosophy in the roman empire : ethics, politics and
society. - (ashgate ancient philosophy series)
1. Philosophy, ancient 2. rome - intellectual life
i. title
180.9'37
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
trapp, michael B.
Philosophy in the roman empire : ethics, politics and society / michael trapp.
p. cm.-- (ashgate ancient philosophy series)
includes bibliographical references (p. ) and indexes.
isBn-13: 978-0-7546-1618-4 (hardcover: alk. paper)
1. Philosophy, ancient. i. title.
B505.t73 2007
180.937--dc22
2006022224
isBn 9780754616184 (hbk)
isBn 9781138270794 (pbk)
Contents
List of Abbreviations vii
Preface ix
1 ‘Ethics’, ‘Philosophy’ and Philosophia 1
The history and internal geography of philosophia 1
The point and balance of philosophia: Imperial-period perceptions 5
The ‘dominance’ of ethics 10
Authority and division 13
Philosophia in the community 18
Who qualifies? 23
2 Perfection and Progress 28
Perfection: ideal states of the person 29
Lives and progress 42
Conclusion 62
3 The Passions 63
Background 63
Emotion and its control in the Imperial period 71
Conclusion: continuity and change 96

4 Self, Person and Individual 98
The soul and the real person 99
Programmes of self-discovery? 109
The self in therapeutic advice 116
The Self and the Will? 122
Afterword 133
5 Self and Others 134
The Stoics 135
Peripatetics, Platonists, Epicureans and Cynics 144
Special issues 150
Conclusion 165
vi Philosophy in the Roman Empire
6 Politics 1: Constitutions and the Ruler 166
The political background to Imperial-period theorizing 166
Constitutions 170
7 Politics 2: Good Communities 185
Dio on the Black Sea 185
Harmony and order 190
Collective moral character 195
Sanctions: law, punishment and instruction 199
Constituents of the community 200
8 Politics 3: Philosophia in Politics and the Community 211
Entertainment, leisure and responsibility 211
Philosophoi in formal politics 215
Conclusion 225
9 Philosophia and the Mainstream 226
Politics 226
A more general lack of alignment? 233
The paradox of an educational setting 243
An uncertain status? 245
Conclusion 256
Appendix: Bio-bibliographies 258
Bibliography 263
Index of Works and Passages 273
General Index 279
List of Abbreviations
ANRW Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt
CIL Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum
DPA Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques
E-K Posidonius, ed. L. Edelstein and I.G. Kidd
IG Inscriptiones Graecae
IGSK Inschriften griechischer Städte aus Kleinasien
ILAlg Inscriptions latines de l’Algérie
NP Der Neue Pauly
IP Xenocrates, ed. M. Isnardi Parente
L-S The Hellenistic Philosophers, ed. A.A. Long and D. Sedley
OCD3 Oxford Classical Dictionary, edn 3
RAC Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum
RE Paulys Realenzyklopädie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft
(‘Pauly-Wissowa’)
SVF Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, ed. H. von Arnim
Us. Epicurea, ed. H. Usener
W. Stobaeus, ed. C. Wachsmuth and O. Hense
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Preface
This is a book about the philosophical discussion of ethics, society and politics, and
about the perceived place of philosophy in society, between the closing decades of
the first century BCE and the opening decades of the third century CE. It does not,
therefore, deal with the whole chronological period of the Roman Empire, down to
the deposition of Romulus Augustulus in 476 CE, but rather with those parts of it
conventionally marked off as the ‘Early’ and ‘High’ Empires, before the emergence
of serious (and, as it turned out, eventually terminal) cracks in the imperial fabric
with the Emperors from Macrinus (217–18) onwards.
The individuals who will be discussed thus include, among others: the Stoics
Seneca, Musonius Rufus, Epictetus, Dio Chrysostom, Hierocles and Marcus Aurelius;
the Platonists Eudorus, Plutarch, Calvenus Taurus, Atticus, Alcinous, Albinus,
Favorinus, Apuleius and Maximus of Tyre, along with the independent Platonist fellow
travellers, Philo Judaeus and Galen; the pseudonymous Neopythagoreans ‘Archytas’,
‘Diotogenes’, ‘Ecphantus’, ‘Hippodamus’, and ‘Sthenidas’; the Peripatetics Aspasius
and Alexander of Aphrodisias; the Cynics Demetrius and Oenomaus of Gadara; the
Sceptic Sextus Empiricus; the compilers and handbook-writers Arius, Aulius Gellius
and Diogenes Laertius; and the philosophical satirist Lucian.1 However heterogeneous
a list this may seem from some points of view – more on this anon – its chronological
outlines and the shared identity of its constituents (or most of them) as citizens or
subjects of the Empire, are well marked.2
Although periodizations based on political events do not by any means always
transfer satisfactorily into the domain of cultural and intellectual life, this one has
perhaps something to be said for it, particularly in respect of its starting-point. The
establishment of the Empire may have been a process achieved in stages rather than
in one blinding flash, but it none the less brought about radical changes in the outlook
of the elites of both the Latin- and the Greek-speaking areas of the Mediterranean
world. It would be natural to expect the effects of those changes to have been felt in
philosophical thinking as well as in political culture, and to set out to explore when
and where (or at least if) such effects were indeed experienced. But in addition to
this, the pattern of events within the history of philosophy, quite apart from events in
the world of politics, might in any case lead one to treat the closing decades of the
1 Brief bio-bibliographical details are given in the Appendix, on pp. 258–62 below.
2 The question whether all these individuals legitimately count as philosophers – or rather,
what the understanding of philosophy is under which (with only one or two exceptions) they
count – is taken up below, in Chapter 1.