The Hellenistic Philosophers

These impressive volumes provide us for the first time with a comprehensive sourcebook for Hellenistic philosophy covering the three centuries from the death of Aristotle in 322 B.C. and its publication is consequently a major event. The material is organised by schools and within each school topics are treated thematically. The schools distinguished are Early Pyrrhonism, Epicureanism, Stoicism, the Academics and the Pyrrhonist revival treated in that order. It thus excludes, except incidentally, treatment of Theophrastus, the Hellenistic Peripatos, Cynics, Cyrenaics and Megarians, and also certain 'post-Hellenistic' writers such as Epictetus and Sextus Empiricus. The exclusion of writers later than the end of the Roman Republic is understandable in view of the need to keep the materials offered within manageable limits, but is hardly to be justified by the claim that the end of the Hellenistic period was 'officially' dated to 31 B.C. The pattern which results frames the Epicureans and Stoics within Scepticism in its various forms, and gives rise to the claim, surely slightly exaggerated, that it is Scepticism which does much to lend Hellenistic philosophy its distinctive colouring in fact the main part of the two volumes is devoted to the highly developed systems of thought of the Stoics and Epicureans.