The Roman Philosophers: From the Time of Cato the Censor to the Death of Marcus Aurelius - Reviews - Book Review

Contemporary Review, Nov, 2002

The Roman Philosophers: From the Time of Cato the Censor to the Death of Marcus Aurelius. Mark Morford. Roufledge. [pounds sterling]45.00. 292 pages. ISBN 0-415-18851-2. Prof. Morford writes 'as a classicist and historian of ideas' and not as a philosopher. His aim in this survey of Roman philosophy is to give readers a 'concise, but not superficial, survey of the writings and ideas of the principal philosophers in the Roman world' from the middle of the second century BC down to the death of Marcus Aurelius in AD 180.

He argues that Roman philosophers have been seen as the poor relations of their Greek counterparts. After a general view of Roman philosophy in this long period, he discusses this Greek influence after which he moves on to Cicero and his contemporaries, Lucretius and the Epicureans, the philosophers and poets of the early Empire, Seneca and his contemporaries, Stoicism in the reigns of Nero and the Flavian dynasty and, finally, philosophy from Epictetus to Marcus Aurelius. He argues that over these six centuries Roman philosophy was marked by a vitality and continuity that makes it worth reading some 1800 years later. Because the book was simultaneously published in the U.S. the author has adopted the somewhat ludicrous BCE for BC and CE for AD.