Abstract

The excuse for publishing a new anthology of texts in ancient philosophy is that the effort is not a duplication of previous attempts, either in terms of the texts offered or the interpretations tendered. It is impossible to meet the first criterion for the pre-Socratics, since there is a concise and relatively agreed upon canon of material. What then of the interpretations offered in this volume? They are scant, unimaginative, and, in some cases, misleading. This is especially true in the case of the sophists. Thus, Callicles' long speech from the Gorgias is quoted as representative of sophistical doctrine on the antithesis between nature and convention. The practice of quoting Plato on the sophists is hazardous at best. Why not, instead, print and analyze those intriguing fragments one and two of Antiphon's Περὶ ληθείας? Or if Plato is to be trusted in regard to the sophists, why not quote Protagoras' remarks in the Platonic dialogue of that same name? Or the excursion in the Theaetetus? These selections would present a much more complete picture of Protagoras' doctrines than the seven lines from the doxographical tradition that the editors supply. In addition, there appears to be little logic in the bibliographies. The only secondary source suggested for the sophists is Untersteiner's book. Havelock's The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics is equally controversial, but certainly more reliable. Or if J. H. Loenen's "Was Anaximander an Evolutionist?" could be dredged up from Mnemosyne, surely some material from the other journals could have been found for the sophists. After the pre-Socratics, the book offers about eighty-five pages of selections from Plato, one hundred pages from Aristotle, twenty-five pages from Hellenistic stoicism, Epicureanism, and skepticism and a concluding twenty pages from Plotinus. A novel and quite useful feature of the book is a thematic table which topically indexes the texts according to the editors' conception of the main branches of philosophy.--E. A. R.