Promoting a New Kind of Education: Greek and Roman Philosophical Protreptic

Daniel Markovich, Ph.D. in Classical Philology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2006), is an Associate Professor in Classics at the University of Cincinnati. He has published on Greco-Roman rhetorical theory, Roman Epicureanism (including a monograph on The Rhetoric of Explanation in Lucretius’ De rerum natura, Brill 2008), and Roman reception of Empedocles.

Preface and Acknowledgments


Abbreviations





1 Introduction: A New Way of Living


 1 From Socratic Protreptic to Philosophical Protreptic


 2 Philosophical Protreptic as a Form of Deliberation


 3 Reading Philosophical Protreptic





2 Entering the Dialogue: Socrates and the Socratic Authors


 1 Aeschines of Sphettos


 2 Plato


 3 Xenophon


 4 Conclusions





3 Philosophy as Theoretical Observation: Aristotle’s Protreptic


 1 The Reconstruction of Aristotle’s Protreptic


 2 The Content of Aristotle’s Protreptic


 3 Aristotle’s Dialogue with Plato


 4 Aristotle and Isocrates


 5 Aristotle and His Audiences


 6 Conclusions





4 Philosophy as Therapy: Hellenistic Authors


 1 Expanding the Audience


 2 Epicurus: Happiness for Everyone


 3 Early and Middle Stoic Authors


 4 The New Academy: Philo of Larissa


 5 Middle Platonism: Eudorus of Alexandria


 6 Conclusions





5 Philosophy and Politics: Roman Paideia


 1 Greek Philosophy in Rome


 2 Lucretius: A View from Above


 3 Cicero: Platonic Politics


 4 Seneca: A Fellow Convalescent


 5 Conclusions





6 Socrates in Rome: Greek Authors of the Empire


 1 Being a Philosopher in the Period of the Second Sophistic


 2 Musonius Rufus: Lucius’s Socrates


 3 Epictetus: Arrian’s Socrates


 4 Dio of Prusa: Socrates in Exile


 5 Lucian of Samosata: Protreptic under a Comic and Satirical Mask


 6 Excursus: Exhortations to Medicine and to Christianity


 7 Conclusions





7 The Unity of Philosophy Reclaimed: Neoplatonism


 1 Neoplatonic Tendencies


 2 Iamblichus: A Protreptic Anthology


 3 Themistius: Philosophy and Rhetoric Reconciled


 4 Boethius: A Protreptic to Himself


 5 Conclusions





Conclusions


 1 Typical Arguments


 2 The Protreptic Worldview and The Philosophy of Education


 3 Rhetorical Strategies


 4 Rhetorical Goals


 5 Philosophical Protreptic and Other Types of Philosophical Literature





Epilogue





Appendix: Examples of Philosophical Protreptic


Editions, Commentaries, and Translations


Secondary Bibliography


Indices