‘Is there a Latin philosophy?’ These are the opening words of the preface to this volume, a series of essays devoted to philosophy in Latin in the Roman world, which grew out of a conference held at Columbia University, New York in 2012. The thirteen papers range chronologically from Lucretius and Cicero through to Apuleius and Augustine. Unsurprisingly, Cicero and Seneca dominate; Seneca has an entire section containing five papers devoted to him.

In the introduction the editors Gareth Williams and Katharina Volk position the volume as a successor to the 1989 collection of essays Philosophia Togata (and its 1997 sequel Philosophia Togata II) edited by Miriam Griffin and Jonathan Barnes, which focused primarily on the fertile period of the first century b.c. In contrast, the editors of this new volume are explicit in their desire to extend the story much further into the Imperial period, with an entire section devoted to ‘Seneca’ and another called ‘Beyond Seneca’. In this they reflect recent developments in the field, which have seen important philosophical work on Seneca and Augustine among others. This shift in focus towards later writers also seems highly appropriate for a volume interested in comprehending distinctively Roman philosophy. After all, while Lucretius and Cicero were first and foremost (although not merely) transmitters and translators of ideas from the Hellenistic schools, Seneca and his successors were (to borrow a phrase from Brad Inwood) ‘doing philosophy’ in Latin.

The opening chapter by Harry Hine examines the shift in meaning of philosophus from Cicero and Seneca to Apuleius, who was the first person to use the label to describe himself. Next, Volk considers the Roman fascination with Pythagoras, who was seen as an Italian rather than a foreign thinker. As such, he was often championed as a forefather or precursor to subsequent Roman philosophy. James Zetzel challenges Cicero's image of philosophy by drawing a contrast between scholarly philosophy and what he calls ‘philosophy in the streets’. Cicero, he suggests, is unreliable, or at least incomplete, in his portrayal of Roman philosophy, ignoring the Magna Graecia traditions discussed by Volk in the previous chapter, and focusing exclusively on the Athenian schools. Cicero gives us one version of Roman philosophy, but we might supplement this with Horace's image of ‘street-philosophy’ that one can find in the Satires. As Zetzel comments (58), this alternative image calls our attention to another kind of philosophical discourse in Rome that, in some respects, was more lively than the sorts of private conversations among the élite represented by Cicero's dialogues.

While the opening chapters provoke us to reflect on what Roman philosophy was, Tobias Reinhardt's chapter takes a quite different approach. He offers a technical discussion of the senses of uidere in Lucretius and Cicero, and the implications for interpreting passages in their works dealing with issues in epistemology. In the process he highlights ‘the potential of the Latin language as a medium for philosophical discourse’ (88). Gretchen Reydams-Schils focuses on Cicero and her paper is an interesting companion to Zetzel's. While Zetzel contrasts Cicero's scholarly approach to philosophy with practical philosophy on the streets, Reydams-Schils stresses the interconnection between ethics and physics, especially for Stoicism. Cicero clearly grasped this point, Reydams-Schils argues, making his scholarly discussions of physical and theological topics far from irrelevant to more practical questions about how to live.

The five chapters on Seneca deal with a range of topics. Andrew Riggsby examines metaphors in Seneca's accounts of emotions. Matthew Roller looks at Seneca's very Stoic approach to traditional Roman exemplary discourse. Yelena Baraz explores the virtue of magnanimity in Seneca's De constantia sapientis, noting along the way that it was first used in a Roman context to describe Cato the Younger. Gareth Williams considers the poetic features of Seneca's prose works, in particular his use of the sublime, and draws some interesting connections with Lucretius (both make literary use of adopting a cosmic viewpoint). Lastly, Margaret Graver tackles the rôle that references to Epicurus play in Seneca's letters, highlighting the different ways in which Seneca reacts to a variety of aspects of Epicureanism. In response to the vexed question regarding Seneca's seemingly contradictory statements about Epicurus, Graver suggests that while Seneca has little time for Epicurean doctrine, he nevertheless has genuine admiration for some aspects of the Epicurean way of life.

Moving beyond Seneca, and indeed Latin, Wolfgang-Rainer Mann turns to Epictetus, and in particular an anecdote about the Roman senator Helvidius Priscus (Diss. 1.2.19–24). He takes this as his starting point for a critical discussion of the appeal to rôles in Epictetus’ ethics, arguing that the injunction to play the rôle of being human is opaque at best, if not more or less meaningless (236). Richard Fletcher takes us back to Latin philosophy, with Apuleius. He examines the somewhat meagre evidence for Apuleius’ translation of Plato's Phaedo, and compares what he can extract from it with Cicero's and Seneca's attempts to translate information about Plato's Forms. The result is a fascinating account of the philosophical stakes at play in ancient Greco-Latin translation.

The final chapter by Katja Maria Vogt is a lively discussion of Augustine and the problem of external world scepticism. As she notes, a common view is that this form of scepticism did not exist in antiquity. Things start to change, however, with Augustine, ‘a philosopher who, right from the start, thinks in Latin’ (261). His concern with knowledge of one's own mental state marks a shift from earlier ancient thought. This new first-person perspective disconnects the mind from the realm of physics, in marked contrast to the Hellenistic schools, creating an epistemological gap between the mind and the external world. For Augustine, however, this turn inwards is merely the first step in a process leading to a turn towards God. But nevertheless the damage is done, and Augustine lays the foundations for modern forms of external world scepticism that dominate later debates. Very neatly, then, Vogt's closing chapter highlights the significance of distinctively Roman philosophy for the subsequent history of the subject. ‘Is there a Latin philosophy?’ Well, perhaps not a single, shared philosophical outlook, but yes, there was certainly important and original philosophy done in Latin in the ancient world.

Collections of papers deriving from conferences can sometimes be a mixed bag, in terms of both quality and coherence. In this case, the quality of the papers is consistently high (the acknowledgements at the end of each chapter suggest that all underwent substantial review and revision before publication). They also cohere surprisingly well. Although not always explicitly so, many of the chapters inform one another. Taken together they offer a fine overview of both the ancient material and the concerns of current scholarship. All texts quoted are helpfully given in both Latin and English translation throughout. Anyone interested in Roman philosophy will want to have a copy of this book.