This volume deals with the interaction between public intellectuals of the late Hellenistic and Roman era, and the powerful individuals with whom they came into contact. How did they negotiate power and its abuses? How did they manage to retain a critical distance from the people they depended upon for their liveli-hood, and even their very existence? These figures include a broad range of prose and poetry authors, dramatists, historians and biographers, philosophers, rhetoricians, religious and other figures of public status. The contributors to the volume consider how such individuals positioned themselves within existing power matrices, and what the approaches and mechanisms were by means of which they negotiated such matrices, whether in the form of opposition, compromise or advocacy. Apart from cutting-edge scholarship on the figures from antiquity investigated, the volume aims to address issues of pertinence in the current political climate, with its manipulation of popular media, and with the increasing interference in the affairs of institutions of higher learning funded from public coffers.

This volume deals with the interaction between public intellectuals of the late Hellenistic and Roman era, and the powerful individuals with whom they came into contact. How did they negotiate power and its abuses? How did they manage to retain a critical distance from the people they depended upon for their liveli-hood, and even their very existence? These figures include a broad range of prose and poetry authors, dramatists, historians and biographers, philosophers, rhetoricians, religious and other figures of public status. The contributors to the volume consider how such individuals positioned themselves within existing power matrices, and what the approaches and mechanisms were by means of which they negotiated such matrices, whether in the form of opposition, compromise or advocacy. Apart from cutting-edge scholarship on the figures from antiquity investigated, the volume aims to address issues of pertinence in the current political climate, with its manipulation of popular media, and with the increasing interference in the affairs of institutions of higher learning funded from public coffers.

This book explores the cultural conflicts of the second-century CE Roman Empire, through the perspective of Greek writings. The specially commissioned essays investigate the intellectual and social tensions in the era which gave rise to Christianity.

This volume examines the idea of ancient education in a series of essays which span the archaic period to late antiquity. It calls into question the idea that education in antiquity is a disinterested process, arguing that teaching and learning were activities that occurred in the context of society. Education in Greek and Roman Antiquity brings together the scholarship of fourteen classicists who from their distinctive perspectives pluralize our understanding of what it meant to teach and learn in antiquity. These scholars together show that ancient education was a process of socialization that occurred through a variety of discourses and activities including poetry, rhetoric, law, philosophy, art and religion.

Intellectuals in Politics in the Greek World, first published in 1984, was the first comprehensive study of this recurrent theme in political sociology with specific reference to antiquity, and led to significant revaluation of the role of intellectuals in everyday political life. The term ‘intellectual’ is carefully defined, and figures as diverse as Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle; Isocrates, Heracleides of Ponteius and Clearchus of Soli are discussed. The author examines the difference between the success of an intellectual politician, like Solon, and the failure of those such as Plato who attempted to mould society to abstract ideals. It is concluded that, ultimately, most philosophers were conspicuously unsuccessful when they intervened in politics: citizens regarded them as propagandists for their rulers, while rulers treated them as intellectual ornaments. The result was that many thinkers retreated to inter-scholastic disputation where the political objects of discussion increasingly became far removed from contemporary reality.

This collection of articles is an important milestone in the history of the study of time conceptions in Greek and Roman Antiquity. It spans from Homer to Neoplatonism. Conceptions of time are considered from different points of view and sources. Reflections on time were both central and various throughout the history of ancient philosophy. Time was a topic, but also material for poets, historians and doctors. Importantly, the contributions also explore implicit conceptions and how language influences our thought categories.