The Children of Athena: Greek Intellectuals in the Age of Rome: 250 BC–400 AD

Historian Freeman (The Closing of the Western Mind) offers an enlightening survey of the Greek intellectual tradition during the Roman Empire. Often overlooked in favor of classical Athens and its foundational schools of thought, Greek philosophy flourished under Roman rule, according Freeman. Beginning with a brief sketch of classical Greece and its absorption by the Roman Empire, Freeman profiles historians, doctors, orators, philosophers, soldiers, and consultants, who exemplify the wide variety of careers available to Greek intellectuals working as purveyors of culture for their Roman employers. Subjects include the historian Polybius, who, unlike his more mythologically minded predecessors, emphasized firsthand research, thus offering cogent lessons on statecraft to his aristocratic audience; the polymath Posidonius, whose admiring ethnographic writings on the Celts would later be useful to Caesar in his near-genocidal military campaign against them; and the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, whose argument that the most ethical position is to ignore suffering and be useful to the established order was popular among the ruling elite of an imperial slave state. While Freeman endeavors to highlight points of continuity between these thinkers and their classical forebears, many come off as self-interested strivers whose ideas were pragmatic and made-to-measure. It adds up to a lively series of character portraits that shed light on the history of ideas. (Dec.)