Maxima beneficia probationem non habent. ‘The greatest benefits cannot be certified by evidence’ — because they reside in the awareness of those who have received them. So wrote Seneca, in words quoted by editor Catalina Balmaceda and daughter Julia Griffin as the headnote to this collection of Miriam Griffin's papers on Roman history, historiography, philosophy and politics. At 775 pages, the book is an impressive repository of G.'s life's work, containing virtually all of her article-length publications along with five previously unpublished lectures and three occasional pieces. The collection, arrangement and reformatting of these writings into a single volume is a major editorial achievement for Balmaceda as well as for G. herself, who saw the project through to completion before her death in 2018.

In her authorial prologue, G. describes the beginnings of her scholarly career: her arrival at Oxford as an American Fulbright scholar in 1957, her first Seneca project under the direction of Isobel Henderson of Somerville College, and above all the supervision of Sir Ronald Syme, then Camden Professor of Roman History. She also states her conviction that Roman philosophy, though overlapping at many points with Rome's history, did not dictate the actions of its political leaders, and that philosophical writing in Latin was not ‘an aggressive take-over of a Greek intellectual domain’; rather; it was ‘an assimilation of difficult philosophical concepts … that enabled Latin writers to engage … in moral casuistry, independently and on their home ground’.

G. also explains the arrangement of the volume. The fifty papers are grouped by subject matter into historical studies, historiographical studies and pieces on philosophy and politics, and then arranged chronologically within each section by date of publication, except that each section begins with a wide-ranging essay chosen to serve as an introduction. Here ‘introductory’ does not mean ‘elementary’, for while the first of the historical essays (‘Cicero and Rome’) could be managed with ease by any undergraduate, ‘Tacitus as a Historian’, which opens the historiography section, assumes extensive familiarity with that author, and ‘Philosophy, Politics, and Politicians at Rome’ is introductory only in that it surveys the entire terrain of Part III, which is to say the whole history of Greek and Roman philosophers’ interactions with Rome's political elite. But it is certainly true that G. has a gift for writing ‘clear introductory pieces’ (as Balmaceda notes). For an easier way into the topics of Part III, one might choose ‘Philosophy for Statesmen: Cicero and Seneca’, which questions Momigliano's assertion that philosophy by Seneca's time had come to seem incompatible with politics, or ‘Seneca and Pliny’, which gives an entrée to Imperial-era political thought via the De clementia, De beneficiis and Panegyricus. Similarly useful is ‘Imago Vitae Suae’, in effect an epitome of Seneca's life by the author of his most important biography.

Now appearing in print for the first time are five studies that were delivered as lectures between 1999 and 2010. These are simply great reading, combining professional attention to detail with G.'s characteristic pointedness and wit. The liveliest is ‘Nero from Zero to Hero’, which contests efforts to rehabilitate the scaenicus princeps while giving full play to his genius for rhetorical gesture. Here, too, we benefit from the expertise of his biographer (Nero: The End of a Dynasty (1985)). The piquancy of G.'s authorial voice is even more in evidence in the three occasional pieces. In her obituary of Sir Ronald Syme, published in JRS in 1989, her use of telling detail establishes a tone that is at once illuminating and intimate:

But the meat of the volume is in the major articles here assembled. Many of these could be listed by title as significant and lasting contributions to the field. To this reviewer's eyes, the most important are, in the History section, ‘Nero and the Concept of Imperial Glory’; under Historiography, ‘The Lyons Tablet and Tacitean Hindsight’ and ‘Claudius in Tacitus’; and under Philosophy and Politics, ‘Philosophy, Cato, and Roman Suicide’, ‘Philosophical Badinage in Cicero's Letters to his Friends’, ‘Cynicism and the Romans: Attraction and Repulsion’, ‘From Aristotle to Atticus: Cicero and Matius on Friendship’ and ‘The Composition of the Academica: Motives and Versions’. Separately, one should also mention two studies specific to Seneca's De beneficiis, a work that is just now coming into its own in Anglophone scholarship owing largely to G.'s efforts. These are ‘De Beneficiis and Roman Society’ and ‘Seneca's Pedagogic Strategy: Letters and De Beneficiis’, both preliminary studies for her translation and commentary (2010, with Brad Inwood) and her 2013 monograph Seneca on Society: A Guide to De Beneficiis.

The collection of all these writings under one cover makes it possible to follow G.'s thought in a new way, by tracing connections among pieces. An inscription on bronze, first published in 1996, gives the full text of the senatus consultum concerning Gnaeus Piso pater, who was accused of murdering Tiberius’ adopted son Germanicus. G. compares the text with Tacitus’ account of the same events in ‘Tacitus as a Historian’ for what it shows about the latter; more extensively in one of the unpublished lectures (‘Writing History: The Senate vs. Tacitus’) as an illustration of historical methodology; and again in ‘Tiberius on Family Relations’ for what it shows of Tiberius’ character. Her earliest mention of it, though, is in a 1997 NYRB article co-authored with Jasper Griffin that finds common ground between the criticisms of Tiberius’ apparent failure to grieve and those directed at the royal family after the death of Princess Diana (‘Show Us You Care, Ma'am’). More subtly, a brilliant essay revisiting Syme's work on pseudepigrapha, or fictional histories, helps us to understand the firmness with which G. insisted that Seneca's Epistulae Morales are indeed pseudo-epistles, ‘essays with an epistolary veneer’, as she famously remarked in Seneca: A Philosopher in Politics (1976) and explains more extensively here, especially in ‘Philosophy for Statesmen’.

While the volume will be most treasured by historians of Rome and of philosophy at Rome, it has much to offer also to those whose primary interest is in rhetoric — notably for the study of invective technique in ‘Piso, Cicero, and their Audience’ — or in ancient epistolography. It makes contributions also to the emerging field of medical humanities, with ‘Symptoms and Sympathy in Latin Letter-writing’, and to political philosophy itself, especially in the final essay, ‘Dignity in Roman and Stoic Thought’.

Seneca wrote, ‘My most abundant conversation is with books.’ Although Miriam Griffin is no longer with us in the body, one can only be grateful for the possibility here offered of many more years of dialogue with her incisive and fertile intellect.

So far as I can tell, the editorial work is impeccable throughout the volume.