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Posidonius (2), Stoic philosopher, c. 135–c. 51 BCE  

I. G. Kidd

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Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Philosophy
Posidonius, Stoic philosopher (see stoicism), scientist, and historian. A Syrian Greek from *Apamea on the Orontes, he was educated at Athens under *Panaetius, but settled in *Rhodes, a prosperous free city with already a reputation for philosophy and science. Granted citizenship, he took a significant part in public life as *prytanis, and as a member of at least one embassy to Rome in 87/6. Probably in the 90s he embarked on long tours of research to the west, visiting certainly Spain, southern Gaul, and of course Rome and Italy. Thereafter his School in Rhodes became the leading centre of Stoicism, and a general mecca not only for intellectuals, but for the great and powerful of the Roman world such as *Pompey and *Cicero.The range of his writing is astonishing. In addition to the conventional departments of philosophy (natural philosophy or *physics, ethics, *logic), he wrote penetratingly on *astronomy, *meteorology, *mathematics, *geography, hydrology, seismology (see earthquakes), zoology (see animals, knowledge about), *botany, *anthropology, and history (see historiography, hellenistic).

Article

Potamon (2), of Alexandria (1), eclectic philosopher  

John Dillon

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Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Philosophy
Potamon of *Alexandria (1), of the time of *Augustus; the only ancient philosopher to describe himself as an ‘eclectic’ (see eclecticism). *Diogenes (6) Laertius (Proem 21) describes him as founding a school, but whether he had followers is doubtful. He seems to have attempted to combine Platonic (see plato(1)), *Peripatetic, and Stoic doctrines (see stoicism).

Article

Praxiphanes  

David John Furley

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Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Philosophy
Praxiphanes, *Peripatetic philosopher (end of 4th–mid-3rd cent. bce). Probably he was born in *Mytilene and worked in *Rhodes. At some time he was publicly honoured in *Delos (IG 11. 613). The few traces of his work remaining suggest that he concentrated on grammatikē (grammar) and literary criticism. He was involved in controversy with the Epicurean *Carneiscus on the subject of friendship, and also with *Callimachus (3), who wrote a book Against Praxiphanes.

Article

Presocratic philosophy  

Catherine Osborne

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Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Philosophy

Philosophy before *Plato comprises (a)*Socrates; (b) the *Sophists (roughly contemporary with Socrates); (c) two centuries of thinkers from *Thales (early 6th cent. bce) to *Democritus (late 5th cent.), many of whom were enquiring into *nature. The period, ending with Socrates—although a few thinkers were younger than Socrates—is generally known as Presocratic philosophy.

The classification makes sense because many problems relating to the sources and texts are common to all the thinkers up to the time of Socrates. Some of them wrote little or nothing. Those who did compose in verse or prose may also have delivered the same or other teaching orally. All the written texts are lost and have been reconstructed (where possible) using quotations from later writers (‘fragments’) and secondary reports in doxographical texts (‘testimonia’; see philosophy, history of). Occasionally finds of papyri, often from the Roman period, add new material. Much effort is expended in reconstructing the texts and theories of these thinkers.

Article

Proclus  

John Dillon

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Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Philosophy
Proclus, Neoplatonist philosopher (410 ce or 412–485; see neoplatonism). Born in *Lycia of wealthy parents, he was destined for the law, but after some study in *Alexandria (1), came to Athens in search of philosophical enlightenment, where he spent the rest of his life. He studied with Plutarch of Athens and *Syrianus, whom he succeeded as head of the Platonic school (diadochos) in 437. His importance as a creative thinker has sometimes been exaggerated: most of the new features which distinguish his Neoplatonism from that of *Plotinus, such as the postulation of triadic ‘moments’ within each hypostasis, or of ‘henads’ within the realm of the One, are traceable, at least in germ, to *Iamblichus (2) or Syrianus. But he is the last great systematizer of the Greek philosophical inheritance, and as such exerted a powerful influence on medieval and Renaissance thought, and even, through Hegel, on German idealism. His learning was encyclopaedic and his output vast. Extant works include the following:1.

Article

Prodicus  

C. C. W. Taylor

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Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Philosophy
Prodicus of *Ceos, a *sophist and contemporary of *Socrates (1). Little is known about his life. We learn from *Plato (1) that he served on diplomatic missions and that he took advantage of the opportunities these afforded to build up his clientele and to demand high fees. He was chiefly a teacher of *rhetoric, with a special interest in the correct use of words and the distinction of near-synonyms. Plato represents Socrates as being on friendly terms with him and paying tribute to the value of his teaching, though usually with a touch of irony. Of his writings all that survives is *Xenophon (1)'s paraphrase of his myth of the Choice of *Heracles between Virtue and Vice. He gave naturalistic accounts of the origin of religion, in some respects anticipating *Euhemerus, and is counted as an atheist by some sources. See also culture-bringers.

Article

Protagoras  

C. C. W. Taylor

Article

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Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Philosophy
Protagoras of *Abdera (c.490–420bce), the most celebrated of the *sophists. He travelled widely throughout the Greek world, including several visits to Athens, where he was associated with *Pericles (1), who invited him to write the constitution for the Athenian colony of *Thurii. The ancient tradition of his condemnation for impiety and flight from Athens is refuted by *Plato (1)'s evidence (Meno 91e) that he enjoyed a universally high reputation till his death and afterwards. See intolerance, intellectual and religious. He was famous in antiquity for agnosticism concerning the existence and nature of the gods, and for the doctrine that ‘Man is the measure of all things’, i.e. the thesis that all sensory appearances and all beliefs are true for the person whose appearance or belief they are; on the most plausible construal that doctrine attempts to eliminate objectivity and truth altogether. It was attacked by *Democritus and Plato (in the Theaetetus) on the ground that it is self-refuting; if all beliefs are true, then the belief that it is not the case that all beliefs are true is itself true.

Article

protrepticus  

David John Furley

Article

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Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Philosophy

Protrepticus, an exhortation (to philosophy), first developed as a genre by the 5th-cent. *sophists, who thus persuaded students to take their courses in philosophy and other arts, especially those required for politics. No early examples are extant, but *Plato (1)'s Euthydemus includes an example (278e–282d), and something similar is found in *Isocrates' Against the Sophists, Helen, Busiris, and To Nicocles. The most famous example in antiquity was *Aristotle's Protrepticus (now lost), addressed to Themison, king of *Cyprus. This is known to have influenced *Cicero's Hortensius (also lost), and was excerpted, to an extent that remains controversial, by the neo-Pythagorean *Iamblichus (2) (see neopythagoreanism) in his Protrepticus, which is extant. A later extant example is *Galen's protreptic to medicine (Kuhn, Med. Graec. Opera, vol. 1).

Article

psychē  

J. N. Bremmer

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Philosophy
Psychē is the Greek term for ‘*soul’, but modern concepts like psychology or psychiatry wrongly suggest that the Greeks viewed the soul in the modern way. In our oldest source, Homer, we still find a widespread soul system, in which psychē was the ‘free-soul’, which represented the individual personality only when the body was inactive: during swoons or at the moment of death. On the other hand, psychological functions were occupied by ‘body-souls’, such as thymos and menos. It is also the psychē that leaves for the Underworld and the dead are indeed frequently, but not exclusively, called psychai; on black-figure vases of c.500 bce we can see a homunculus, sometimes armed, hovering above the dead warrior.Towards the end of the Archaic age two important developments took place. First, *Pythagoras (1) and other philosophers introduced the notion of reincarnation. The development is still unexplained, but it certainly meant an upgrading of the soul, which we subsequently find in *Pindar called ‘immortal’.

Article

Ptolemy (3), of Cyrene, Sceptic philosopher, c. 100 BCE  

Simon Hornblower

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Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Philosophy

Ptolomy (3) of Cyrene revived the sceptical school of philosophy (see sceptics) about 100 bce (Diog. Laert. 9. 115).

Article

punishment, Greek theories about  

Trevor J. Saunders

Article

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Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Philosophy
Punishment may be defined as ‘suffering inflicted on an offender in return for the suffering he inflicted’. On this definition the first holder of a theory of punishment is the Homeric hero (see homer); for when he retaliates against an offender he can articulate his purposes: (1) to restore or enhance his own timē (wealth, status) by exacting recompense, preferably large, from the offender; (2) satisfaction of his affronted feelings, in the shape of pleasure at the sight of the offender's discomfiture occasioned by (1); (3) publicity for his own superior strength; (4) deterrence of the offender (and of others) for the future. In achieving these aims he causes the offender to suffer reciprocally, as the definition requires. (However, other views of punishment in Homer are on offer: Adkins ‘assimilates’ it to (1), Mackenzie desiderates an impartial ‘penal authority’.)Implicitly or explicitly, these four purposes dominated in penal contexts in all Greek life and literature. The strongly vindictive demand from injured parties for recompense in some form, even if only satisfaction of feelings, generated among other things: (a) severe penalties (confiscation of property, heavy fines, exile, and death were commonplace); (b) surrogate punishees, i.

Article

Pyrrhon  

Gisela Striker

Article

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Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Philosophy
Pyrrhon of Elis (c.365–275bce), the founder of Greek Scepticism (see sceptics). He was a painter early in his life, but then studied with a certain Bryson (it is not clear which) and with the Demo-critean *Anaxarchus, with whom he travelled to India in the train of *Alexander (3) the Great. There he is said to have encountered the ‘gymnosophists’ and ‘magi’ who were thought to have influenced his later philosophical views. He returned to his native town and lived a quiet and modest life, honoured and respected by his fellow citizens.Pyrrhon wrote nothing, and what we know of him goes back to the writings of his main pupil, *Timon (2) of Phlius. Later accounts of Pyrrhon's philosophy tend to be heavily influenced by the philosophers of the Pyrrhonist revival after *Aenesidemus. From a passage attributed to Timon we learn that Pyrrhon claimed that nothing can be found out about the nature of things because neither our senses nor our opinions are true or false. Hence we should be without opinions or inclinations, saying about all things that they no more are than they are not (οὐ μᾶλλον).

Article

Pythagoras (1), Pythagoreanism  

Charles H. Kahn and Fritz Graf

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Science, Technology, and Medicine
  2. Philosophy

Pythagoras, son of Mnesarchus, one of the most mysterious and influential figures in Greek intellectual history, was born in *Samos in the mid-6th cent. bce and migrated to *Croton in c.530 bce. There he founded the sect or society that bore his name, and that seems to have played an important role in the political life of *Magna Graecia for several generations. Pythagoras himself is said to have died as a refugee in Metapontum. Pythagorean political influence is attested well into the 4th cent., with *Archytas of Tarentum.

The name of Pythagoras is connected with two parallel traditions, one religious and one scientific. On the religious aspects, see below. Pythagoras seems to have become a legendary figure in his own lifetime and was identified by some with the *Hyperborean*Apollo. His supernatural status was confirmed by a golden thigh, the gift of bilocation, and the capacity to recall his previous incarnations. Classical authors imagine him studying in Egypt; in the later tradition he gains universal wisdom by travels in the east. Pythagoras becomes the pattern of the ‘divine man’: at once a sage, a seer, a teacher, and a benefactor of the human race.

Article

reciprocity, Greek  

Tazuko Angela van Berkel

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Economy
  2. Philosophy

Reciprocity is a modern concept used in classical scholarship to denote the principle and practice of voluntary requital, both of benefit-for-benefit (positive reciprocity) and of harm-for-harm (negative reciprocity). The concept originated in the discipline of economic anthropology, but has been fruitful in the analysis of social, erotic, financial, political, and religious life in the Greek world. As a principle, reciprocity structures the plot of Homeric epics and Attic tragedy. It is also a phenomenon reflected on in diverse genres: its political meaning is explored in Homeric depictions of leadership crises and in Xenophon’s leadership theory. Presocratic cosmologies and early Greek historiography experiment with reciprocity as an explanatory principle. Attic tragedy and moral philosophy expose the implications and shortcomings of the ethical norm of reciprocity.

Reciprocity is a modern concept used in classical scholarship to denote the principle and practice of voluntary requital.1 Although the principle applies to both the requital of benefit-for-benefit (positive reciprocity) and of harm-for-harm (negative reciprocity, for instance revenge or retaliation), most debate has focused on positive reciprocity as an economic and interpersonal principle. The underlying intuition, that giving goods or rendering services imposes upon the recipient a moral obligation to respond, appears to be a universal.

Article

Sallustius, author  

Erik Robertson Dodds

Article

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Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Philosophy
Sallustius, author of a brief manual of Neoplatonic piety known as On the Gods and the World; see neoplatonism. He is probably to be identified with the emperor *Julian's friend, Flavius Sallustius, consul 363 (PLRE 1, ‘Sallustius’ 5). His book echoes the language and ideas of *Iamblichus (2) and Julian, and seems to have been written under Julian reign (ce 361–3) to support the pagan reaction against Christianity.

Article

Satyrus (1), Peripatetic author, fl. 3rd cent. BCE  

Stephanie West

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Greek Literature
  2. Philosophy
Peripatetic author from Callatis (Mangalia, Romania). Works: (1)Bioi (Lives) of kings, statesmen, orators, philosophers, and poets, known chiefly from citations by *Athenaeus (1) and *Diogenes (6) Laertius. POxy. 1176 preserves a substantial fragment on *Euripides from book 6, which also covered *Aeschylus and *Sophocles (1). Satyrus evidently used a *dialogue form; though the style is agreeable, the approach is unscholarly, material being drawn from comedy and anecdote, and from passages in Euripides' plays uncritically treated as autobiographical.(2)Peri characteron (On characters); the one fragment, a passage quoted by Athenaeus (4. 168e), exhibits the moralistic propensity observable in the fragments of the Lives. (Other authors of the same name should be credited with works On the*demesof*Alexandria(1) (FGrH631, cf. POxy. 2465 (RE18), on myths (RE19; see next entry), and on gems (RE20).

Article

Sceptics  

Gisela Striker

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Philosophy
Philosophers who hold no doctrine and suspend judgement on everything. The label σκεπτικός (‘inquirer’, but used with the implicit understanding that the inquiry does not end) was introduced in the 1st cent. bce, probably by the younger Pyrrhonists; before then, these philosophers would be known as Pyrrhonists or Academics, respectively.Early Pyrrhonism. According to the ancient tradition, the founder of scepticism was *Pyrrhon of Elis (c.365–275 bce). He held that it was not possible to determine whether things are one way rather than another, and that one should therefore refrain from asserting anything. Arguments to the effect that conflicts of appearances and opinions cannot be decided had been around since the time of *Protagoras and *Democritus, but Pyrrhon was probably the first to adopt the attitude of non-assertion and promote it as the foundation of peace of mind or tranquillity. Pyrrhon's school does not seem to have had any immediate followers after the time of his main pupil, *Timon (2) of Phlius.

Article

scholarship, ancient, Latin  

Robert A. Kaster

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Latin Literature
  2. Philosophy
The origins of scholarship at Rome are lost to view, along with much of Rome's earliest scholarly writing. Suetonius' attempt (Gramm. 2) to trace Rome's first experience of Hellenistic scholarship to the visit of *Crates (3) of Mallos around 167 bce is more colourful than reliable; it no doubt captures, however, the kind of contact that was influential in the course of the 2nd cent., when a ‘great flock’ of learned men came to Rome from Greece (Polyb. 31. 24. 6 f.). By the end of the 2nd cent. and the start of the 1st not only was there substantial learning displayed in the Didascalica of *Accius and the satires of *Lucilius (1), but L. *Aelius had developed what would be the three main foci of Roman scholarship: ‘antiquities’, treating the institutions and beliefs of Rome and her neighbours; literary studies, including questions of authenticity and literary history (but little that we would recognize as ‘literary criticism’); and the more or less systematic study of language, especially (in this early period) *etymology and semantics.

Article

the self in Greek literature  

Christopher Gill

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
29 March 2017
Subjects:
  1. Greek Literature
  2. Philosophy
The notion of “self” is a non-technical one, bridging the areas of psychology and ethics or social relations. Criteria for selfhood include psychological unity or cohesion, agency, responsibility, self-consciousness, reflexivity, and capacity for relationships with others. “Self” is a modern concept with no obvious lexical equivalent in Greek (or Latin); the question therefore arises of the relationship between the modern concept and ancient thinking, as embodied in Greek literature. Three approaches to this question can be identified. One focuses on the idea that there is development within Greek literature towards an understanding of the self or person as a cohesive unit and bearer of agency and responsibility. Another approach sees certain aspects of Greek literature and philosophy as prefiguring some features of the modern concept of self. A third approach underlines the difference between the Greek and modern thought worlds in the formulation of concepts in this area, while also suggesting that Greek ideas and modes of presenting people can be illuminating to moderns, in part because of the challenge posed by their difference. These approaches draw on a range of evidence, including psychological vocabulary, characterization in Greek literature, and Greek philosophical analyses of ethical psychology. There are grounds for maintaining the credibility of all three approaches, and also valid criticisms that can be made of each of them.

Article

senses, ancient conceptions of  

Ashley Clements

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Philosophy
Among ancient conceptions of the senses it is the theories of *Aristotle especially that have informed modern western popular ideas of the sensorium as a faculty of five, mutually exclusive, sensory modalities with correspondingly separate sense-objects and ‘domains’ (‘the senses’). But ancient conceptualizations of senses and sensory experience display significant diversity beyond and at odds with this now entirely naturalized notion (cf. colour, ancient perceptions of), and ancient writers also evoke experience in terms that transcend the segregation of the senses posited by the philosophers.The first philosophers theorize senses only as part of a wider project of ontology and the basic principles each takes to underlie the structure of the cosmos also inform the physics of perception. According to *Theophrastus, there are two general physiological models (i.e., that like perceives like, or that perception occurs through opposition, Theophr. Sens. 1). Common preoccupations are the epistemic authority of the senses (the relation of perception to knowledge) and their physiological explanation. *Alcmaeon, *Anaxagoras, *Empedocles, *Diogenes of Apollonia and *Democritus theorize in detail the workings of cognition.