Studies in Stoicism

Brunt was interested primarily in Stoicism in the Roman period, and his chief concern was the practical influence of its ethical teaching on political and social life. Although his investigations were historical, they required a complete mastery of the Stoic texts and doctrine. Basing his work almost entirely on the ancient sources, Brunt provides the most complete account and comparison available today not only of the ideas of the Roman Stoic moralists, but also of the political philosophy of the Greek founders of the Stoa. He believed that the ideas of the Stoics of the Roman period were essentially continuous with the thinking of the founders, and he did not accept that the concern with practical everyday morality in later Stoicism was a new development. Studies in Stoicism contains six unpublished and seven republished essays, the latter incorporating additions and changes which Brunt wished to be made. The papers have been integrated and arranged in roughly chronological order and by subject matter, with an accessible lecture to the Oxford Philological Society serving as Brunt's own introduction.