Miriam Griffin is unrivalled as a bridge-builder between historians of the Graeco-Roman world and students of its philosophies. This wide-ranging volume in her honour brings together essays from seventeen international specialists, on a topic which is of major importance. Its subject matter covers from Socrates to late antiquity, extending to Diogenes, Cicero, Pliny the Elder, Marcus Aurelius, the Second Sophistic, Ulpian, Augustine, the Neoplatonist tradition, women philosophers, provision for basic human needs, the development of law, the formulation of imperial power, and the interpretation ... More

Miriam Griffin is unrivalled as a bridge-builder between historians of the Graeco-Roman world and students of its philosophies. This wide-ranging volume in her honour brings together essays from seventeen international specialists, on a topic which is of major importance. Its subject matter covers from Socrates to late antiquity, extending to Diogenes, Cicero, Pliny the Elder, Marcus Aurelius, the Second Sophistic, Ulpian, Augustine, the Neoplatonist tradition, women philosophers, provision for basic human needs, the development of law, the formulation of imperial power, and the interpretation of Judaism and early Christianity. Emperors and drop-outs, media stars and administrators, top politicians and abstruse professionals, even ordinary citizens in their epitaphs, were variously called philosophers. Philosophy could offer those in power moral support or confrontation, a language for making choices or an intellectual diversion, but they might disregard philosophy and get on with the exercise of power. All Latin and Greek has been translated.