Roman Philosophy

It is generally accepted that the epistemological views advocated by Lucullus in Cicero’s Academica belong to a Stoic framework. In this paper I argue that, though this is true, there are also elements that do not belong within the epistemology of the Stoa, or at very least the Stoa of Chrysippus, and are best understood as innovations on the part of Antiochus of Ascalon, who broke from the Academy’s sceptical epistemology in favour of the Stoa but nevertheless, it seems to me, retained some features of the Academic approach (cf. Polito 2012).

Platonic Sights / Ciceronian Insights: Philosophical Artistry in the Orator

Life is a play, and has been since antiquity. Although the “theatre of life” trope is today best known from Shakespeare, it had a rich history in Hellenistic and Roman moral philosophy. Originating in the Hellenistic period, probably with the Stoic Aristo (D.L. 7.160), the theatre of life metaphor had its heyday in Roman-era writers like Cicero, Horace, Seneca, and Epictetus. This paper proposes a threefold taxonomy of the metaphors with close reading of key passages.  

From the vantage of the Lucullus, written in early 45 BCE, the end of the Platonic Academy no less than the demise of the Republic threatens the termination of two historical traditions with which Cicero identifies strongly. As he is writing in the midst of personal desuetude and social breakdown, Cicero “cross-pollinates” these failing lineages in order to locate himself and his work in relation to the traditions of the past, and, more importantly, to develop a new genealogical mode for an uncertain future.