A Commentary on Plutarch's De latenter vivendo

Geert Roskam

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Monograph - hardback

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Plutarch's De latenter vivendo is the only extant work from Antiquity in which Epicurus' famous ideal of an 'unnoticed life' (lathe biosas) is thematised as such. Moreover, the short rhetorical work provides a lot of interesting information about Plutarch's polemical strategies and about his own philosophical convictions in the domains of ethics, politics, metaphysics, and eschatology. In this book, Plutarch's anti-Epicurean polemic is understood against the background of the previous philosophical tradition. An examination of Epicurus' own position is followed by a discussion of Plutarch's polemical predecessors (Timocrates, Cicero, the early Stoics, and Seneca) and contemporaries (Epictetus), and by a systematical and detailed analysis of Plutarch's own arguments. The lemmatic commentary offers additional information and parallel passages (both from Plutarch's own works and from others authors) that cast a new light on the text.

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Introduction

1. Epicurus and Epicurean tradition

2. The anti-Epicurean tradition before Plutarch

3. Plutarch's De latenter vivendo

Commentary

Bibliography

Indices

Format: Monograph - hardback

Size: 240 × 160 × 20 mm

279 pages

ISBN: 9789058676030

Publication: September 10, 2007

Series: Plutarchea Hypomnemata 1

Languages: English

Stock item number: 45670

Geert Roskam is Professor of Greek language and literature at KU Leuven.