The studies collected in this volume were published by Anna Maria Ioppolo over the course of some thirty years and constitute an important milestone in recent research on ancient thought. They reflect the renewed interest in Hellenistic philosophies which emerged in the 1980s. Through a rigorous application of the historical and philological method of the Italian historical school, with its focus on the sources and original texts, a careful and detailed reconstruction is provided of the arguments and debates that shaped the philosophical schools of the Hellenistic and Imperial age, while at the same time engaging in the kind of theoretical investigations which are usually provided by more analytical investigations. The subjects discussed include topics of great relevance for Hellenistic and Imperial-age philosophies, such as assent, the passions, the Stoic doctrine of causality in its different versions, the polemics between Academics and Sceptics, and astrology. Alongside well-known names (Arcesilaus, Carneades, Cicero, Seneca), these studies cover a range of apparently minor figures and currents (Herillus, Favorinus, the neoteroi Academics) whose historical and philosophical framing has crucially contributed to the drawing of an exhaustive, all-round picture of Hellenistic and Imperial-age philosophy.

The Ancient and Middle Stoics share with the Presocratics the ill fortune of having their work lost. There is, however, an enourmous amount of fragments and reports that have come down to us from contemporary or later philosophers and writers with an interest in philosophy (such as Alexander of Aphrodisias, Cicero, Galen, Plotinus, Plutarch, Proclus and Sextus Empiricus), theologians (for example, Clement and Philo of Alexandria, Eusebius and Origen), and doxographers (Diogenes Laertius and Stobaeus). Some of these sources are hostile and, therefore, they tend to distort the original doctrine. But they all provide us a great amount of evidence for the knowledge of Stoicism. This book offers a large selection of this evidence (Greek and Latin texts with critical apparatus and philological notes accompanying a Spanish translation and philosophical commentary). Some significant passages from Seneca, Musonius Rufus, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius are also included.