To be clear from the outset: this is a very strange book. The author has an axe to grind, and his primary target appears to be philosophy as ‘a way of life’, a notion developed primarily by Pierre Hadot. Vesperini leaves philosophia untranslated to avoid connotations that, from his point of view, would be anachronistic. In a Roman context, he argues throughout the book, philosophia covers an encyclopedic range of many Greek forms of knowledge. As ornamentum, philosophia has a primarily esthetic function, as can be seen too in the decorations and libraries of Roman villas, and it is meant both to provide high-level entertainment (delectatio) and to enhance the cultural status as well as the socio-political capital (gloria-virtus) of its bearers.

V.'s study treats Ennius' Annals in connection with the temple of the Muses erected by M. Fulvius Nobilior; the so-called books of Numa; the embassy to Rome of the Athenian philosophers; the relation between philosophers such as Blossius and Panaetius and their patrons; Roman Epicureans, and especially the relation between Piso and Philodemus; and, finally, the authors of the Roman Republic who could be seen as philosophers themselves, namely Lucretius and Cicero. The range of material covered is impressive. As such, the study serves as a powerful testimony to the socio-cultural aspects of philosophia in Rome. If the author had stopped there, the work would have been a valuable contribution. Unfortunately, V. is also intent on proving that the impact of the philosophical ideas themselves on the outlook and life of these famous Romans was negligible.

A first considerable problem for this thesis arises with the sources. We have very limited evidence dating back to the actual cultural context of the earliest manifestations of philosophia in Rome. It is striking, for instance, how much V. relies on accounts such as Plutarch's Lives, written in Greek, early in the second century a.d. At the very least, one should take into account Plutarch's own socio-cultural context, and his own emphases in the treatment of his material. Similarly, one of V.'s main sources for Scipio Aemilianus' interest in philosophia primarily as an elegant pastime is none other than Cicero (208ff.). And by V.'s own admission, Cicero is writing a very distinct ‘history’ of philosophia in Rome in order to underscore the significance of his own contributions. Only in Cicero's case, then, do we have the kind of evidence, in his correspondence, that allows us to see, parallel to his other writings, how he construed his position in Roman society.

The more ‘philosophical’ V.'s material becomes, the more his method leads his readers astray. Thus one is rather surprised to learn that the debates and controversies around the embassy in 155 b.c. to Rome of the three Athenian philosophers Carneades (Academic), Diogenes (Stoic) and Critolaus (Peripatetic) had little to do with philosophical ideas, but rather with styles of oratory (143). But as Cicero, one of the main sources on this embassy with his own distinct interest in oratory, makes abundantly clear, there is a direct correlation between the style of speech adopted by the representatives of the different philosophical schools and the philosophical content.

Matters do not improve when readers are told that Lucretius' De rerum natura was really not meant to convey philosophical ideas. V. has shown how the bravura aspects of the work would have been received. But when he tries to argue away the philosophical aspects of the poem, his argument derails. It is not true that Epicurus is not mentioned by name (see 3.1042). But even if that were the case, the Prefaces of Books 3, 5 and 6 leave no doubt in the audience's minds who is meant. Whereas the poem does not pay much explicit attention to the key Epicurean theme of friendship (but there is the rôle Lucretius assumes vis-à-vis Memmius, grafted onto the traditional patron-client relationship), other therapeutic Epicurean aims do pervade the text, namely to rid human beings of the suffering that results from fear of the gods, fear of death and the passions. On the standard Epicurean account, absence of pain is the highest type of pleasure.

Of the hundred or so pages the author devotes to Cicero, only a handful, right at the end, treat his philosophical writings. In this section, Cicero's works on oratory, together with his correspondence, dominate. Perhaps this is a welcome change of perspective, given that most of the philosophical works were written, after all, in a couple of years towards the end of Cicero's life. Yet even V., though he chooses not to dwell on it, has to admit that a radical change does happen in this last phase of Cicero's activity, and that philosophy as ars vitae starts to assert itself.

That the study overreaches is, to this reader at least, nowhere clearer than when V. states (based on Plutarch's rendering of Cato's suicide, see comment above) that the Romans had no interest in interiority, but were entirely concerned with outward appearance (497–8), and that, in fact, one has to wait until the Christian Augustine to find this turn inwards attested. If this were true, one could hardly make sense, to make just one counter-argument, of Cicero's treatment of the Stoic theory of passions in his Tusculan Disputations, which requires that one assess closely one's value judgements. One would also miss one of Cicero's most distinctive contributions to the debate about the best life for human beings, as an innovative combination of the active life and the pursuits of reason. And the later Seneca — with his repeated injunctions that one turn to or withdraw into oneself — would find himself in a complete cultural and philosophical vacuum.