This book traces, for the first time, a revolution in philosophy which took place during the early centuries of our era. It reconstructs the philosophical basis of the Stoics' theory that fragments of an ancient and divine wisdom could be reconstructed from mythological traditions, and shows that Platonism was founded on an argument that Plato had himself achieved a full reconstruction of this wisdom, and that subsequent philosophies had only regressed once again in their attempts to "improve" on his achievement.

How closely do the theoretical notions of "metaphor" and "allegory" developed by ancient rhetoricians reflect the practice of Classical writers? This question is tackled through eleven new papers by a team of distinguished academics. Ancient theories of metaphor are compared with twentieth-century alternatives; theory is tested against practice; and allegory--a distinctive though neglected feature of ancient literature and philosophy--is explored against the background of the rhetoricians' claim that it is one form of metaphor.

It hardly needs repeating that Plato defined philosophy partly by contrast with the work of the poets. What is extraordinary is how little systematic exploration there has been of his relationship with specific poets other than Homer. This neglect extends even to Hesiod, though Hesiod is of central importance for the didactic tradition quite generally, and is a major source of imagery at crucial moments of Plato's thought. This volume, which presents fifteen articles by specialists on the area, will be the first ever book-length study dedicated to the subject. It covers a wide variety of...