Proceeding from a spring 2012 conference at Columbia University entitled ‘Latin Philosophy’, Roman Reflections comprises a collection of essays that seek to investigate whether, around the first century bce and ce, there existed a distinctively Latin philosophy. By ‘Latin philosophy’ is meant, not just philosophy as translated from Greek into Latin or passively transmitted, but philosophy as ‘shaped by Roman history and institutions, concepts, and values’ (p. vii). The project extends a vector outlined by three earlier developments in the field: (1) A. Wallace-Hadrill's observation that a ‘cultural revolution’ was on the rise in the late Roman Republic and early Empire, as evinced in the realm of the arts, religion, law, language, as well as in technical fields of knowledge, including philosophy; (2) an appreciation for the historical embeddedness of Roman philosophy and, with this, a growing interest in interdisciplinarity; and (3) the production of volumes 1 and 2 of Philosophia Togata (edd. M. Griffin and J. Barnes), the closest precursors to the present volume. Continuing in this vein, Roman Reflections aims both to engage with contemporary scholarship on Roman philosophy and to explore new lines of inquiry.

Following an editorial introduction, the volume proceeds in four parts: a one-chapter part expounding Roman attitudes towards ‘philosophy’ and ‘philosophers’ from Cicero to Apuleius; a second part covering Roman philosophy in the Late Republic (four articles); a third part devoted to Seneca (five articles); and a fourth part looking to those ‘Beyond Seneca’ (three articles). The volume professes only limited coverage as a whole and no unified storyline.

In the opening essay, ‘Philosophy and philosophi’, H. Hine argues that, from Cicero up to Apuleius, Romans could express a commitment to ‘philosophy’ (philosophia) and a willingness to ‘philosophize’ (philosophari), but reserved the term ‘philosopher’ (philosophus) as a disparaging term for Greek practitioners; the positive counterpart to this, used with reference to the Roman philosopher, was ‘the one devoted to philosophy’ (studiosus philosophiae; I would add that ‘the one devoted to wisdom’ [studiosus sapientiae] was also standard: Quintilian, Inst. 1.pr.14; 12.2.8; Cicero, Off. 2.5; Tusc. 1.1). Hine shows that Apuleius was the first known Roman author to use the term philosophus in a positive sense and with reference to the Roman philosopher.

Part 2 covers a range of topics. V., in ‘Roman Pythagoras’, explores the way in which Pythagorean philosophy shaped the Roman intellectual tradition. She demonstrates that Romans in the second century bce strove to depict Pythagoras as indigenously Italian and his philosophy as integrally related to Rome's early history, families and customs. In ‘Philosophy Is in the Streets’, J.E.G. Zetzel argues that a Roman tradition of philosophy flourished in the first half of the first century bce, quite apart from the philosophical writings of Cicero. Evidence in Horace and Varro demonstrates that philosophical themes were already matters of general interest, even before Romans devoted themselves to the composition of Roman philosophical literature. In the next essay, T. Reinhardt, in ‘To See and to Be Seen’, assesses the various senses of videre and videri in Latin philosophy. Concentrating on the writings of Lucretius and Cicero, he illustrates the way in which these authors expose ‘the potential of the Latin language as a medium for philosophical discourse’ (p. 88). In a nicely balanced essay, ‘Teaching Pericles’, G. Reydams-Schils argues that Cicero's ethics were in fact grounded in his physics, contrary to common opinion, and that his ethics did not stand alone as his sole philosophical interest. Central to his ethics were the Stoic notions of sociability and the world as a city of gods and humans. Cicero viewed physics negatively only where they detracted attention from ethics.

A.M. Riggsby's ‘Tyrants, Fire, and Dangerous Things’ opens Part 3. The essay offers an assessment of Seneca's discussion of anger in De ira through conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff and Johnson) and conceptual blending theory (Fauconnier and Turner). Riggsby demonstrates effectively that Seneca uses the obscurity of metaphor to slide between scientific/Stoic views on anger and popular/folk perspectives, thus achieving some coherence between them. Next, M. Roller, ‘Precept[or] and Example in Seneca’, compares and contrasts ‘everyday exemplary discourse’ and exemplary discourse in Seneca. While ‘everyday’ and Senecan exemplary discourse follow a common pattern in their appeal to the deeds of illustrious exemplars to inculcate values in their audiences, Roller shows that Seneca re-narrates these exploits in ways that overturn common social values (which often act as masks for vice) and sets the values of philosophical virtue in their place. For Seneca, moreover, the highest values are embodied not in isolated deeds but in virtue performed consistently, which is found only in the wise man. Y. Baraz, in ‘True Greatness of Soul in Seneca's De constantia sapientis’, highlights a similar distinction: whereas Romans commonly conceived of ‘greatness’ (magnanimitas) in terms of social hierarchy, Seneca estimated greatness in terms of a hierarchy of virtue. Baraz argues, however, that Seneca remained unwittingly complicit in his perpetuation of common conceptions of greatness, for Seneca often correlated virtue and vice with social status; thus we find in Seneca's works an ‘interpenetration of hierarchies’ (p. 168). W., in ‘Minding the Gap: Seneca, the Self, and the Sublime’, explores the rhetoric of the positive and negative ‘sublime’, and the ‘gap’ between these levels, in Seneca, and the way in which Latin poetic forms, especially in Virgil and Lucretius, contributed to its expression. These texts, W. suggests, describe the sublime in terms of a ‘judicious obscurity’ (p. 185). Such language heightens elation or horror (as the case may be) precisely by its obscurity, for when one sees a thing clearly, sees it for what it is, wonder vanishes. The height of positive sublimity, the wise man is, therefore, for Seneca, as much a doctrinal notion as he is an aesthetic construction, woven in a style of prose ‘fundamentally conditioned by Latin poetic mechanisms’ (p. 190). In the final essay of Part 3, ‘The Emotional Intelligence of Epicureans’, M. Graver considers the limits of Seneca's approval of Epicurus. Graver suggests that Seneca was willing to endorse Epicurus on matters of behaviour, such as personal habits (e.g. communal living) and educational methods (e.g. his use of therapeutic arguments and techniques), but that he consistently maintained a critical stance towards his doctrines. This stance, proposes Graver, constituted a kind of ‘philosophical opportunism’, not accommodation to Epicurus’ ethics (p. 203).

Introducing Part 4 is W.-R. Mann, ‘“You're Playing You Now”: Helvidius Priscus as a Stoic Hero’. Mann counters recent characterisations of Epictetus’ ethics as thoroughly ‘particularist’ (ethical judgements as situationally contingent) by showing that Epictetus often appeals to universal morality, apart from particular circumstances (as, e.g., in the case of the father and son in Diatr. 2.10.7). For Epictetus, moreover, the ‘role’ (προσώπον) that one plays requires some preconceived standard with which to align oneself, and so depends upon some ‘universal’ standard; role, then, cannot be determined entirely by circumstances. In the next essay, R. Fletcher, ‘Platonizing Latin: Apuleius’ Phaedo’, assesses Apuleius’ translation of Phaedo into Latin in two extant fragments by focusing on their treatment of Plato's theory of forms. Fletcher finds that at certain points Apuleius introduces into his translation elements not found in the corresponding text of Plato, but that are present in Plato elsewhere and accurately clarify the thought. This style of translation Fletcher designates ‘collative translation’ (p. 243). The volume concludes with an essay by K.M. Vogt on ancient versus modern versions of scepticism, ‘Why Ancient Skeptics Don't Doubt the Existence of the External World: Augustine and the Beginnings of Modern Skepticism’. In its ancient form, scepticism allowed doubt about sense perception, theoretical knowledge, testimony and reflexive knowledge, but not about the existence of the world, for ancient sceptics viewed the mind itself as part of the world. We encounter a new kind of sceptic in Augustine. Conceiving of the mind as subject, i.e. conceiving of the mind from a first-person stance, Augustine begins with the assumption of self-knowledge, and thereby establishes the existence of the self as more certain than anything else. Having opened up a gulf between the mind and the world, it now becomes possible to doubt the world's existence.

This volume marks an important advance in the study of Roman philosophy as a kind of philosophy in its own right. The professed interdisciplinarity of the volume serves as a tool for penetrating new insights, among which the most important relate to the nature of philosophical discourse itself, the philosophy of philosophy, so to speak: how to sort out ‘scientific’ versus ‘folk’ discourse, the literal versus the figurative, the substantive versus the rhetorical, or, in Plato's terms, λόγος and μῦθος. Riggsby's essay on Seneca, for instance, raises challenging questions about the limitations of language in propositional discourse – or rather the necessity of figures to express philosophical truths – and perhaps more importantly, about the extent to which ancient philosophers were aware of their movement between these modes of speech. Rightly evaluating the rhetorical dimensions more generally of philosophical discourse is of critical importance to interpretation, particularly in the case of Seneca, who is highly ‘rhetorical’ (or artistic). In this regard, one might pose to Baraz the question whether Seneca does not appeal to common evaluations of social levels only in an attempt to accommodate to his audience (i.e. starting with their premises), and to social hierarchies therefore only as an analogical vehicle. The debate between the ‘realist’ and the ‘idealist’ interpretations of the wise man, addressed in some way by W.’s essay, also falls under this line of inquiry.

Relatedly, we might ask whether there is a difference between what the philosophers thought they were saying and what we think they were really saying; in sociological terms, this is the difference between taking an ‘emic’ and an ‘etic’ approach to interpretation. Was Seneca, for instance, aware that his discussion of anger mixed scientific and folk metaphors? Did he imagine that his presentation of the wise man was in part an aesthetic construction? Since the whole enterprise of scholarship is interpretative, moreover, we might ask where our interpretative constructions align with the terms of the ancient authors and where they might impose frameworks in some ways at odds with them. While Graver's distinction between behaviours and doctrines, for instance, offers some help to us as a means of sorting out Seneca's attitudes about Epicurus, it should be said that this construal departs from the self-conception that ancient philosophy offers: behaviours could not be separated from doctrines, nor doctrines from behaviours. Those behaviours that Seneca seems to have shared with Epicurus, in other words, were grounded in disparate ways of viewing the universe and society. If, from the Stoic perspective, ‘intention’ (voluntas) determined the rightness or wrongness of a behaviour, i.e. if one's way of regarding an act determined its morality, is it strictly accurate to say that Seneca endorsed Epicurus’ behaviours?

Inquiring further into the philosophical dimensions of Roman philosophical discourse – the philosophy of their philosophy – could offer a fruitful line of study for future projects.