Permit me yet one last explanatory remark: why I keep coming back to the concept of “Antiquity.” In the last few years the enterprise of philosophy has imperceptibly changed; and this only shortly preceding its withdrawal from public discourse entirely (at least in Germany). Every debate ended, time and again, on the question of the sense (or lack of it)...

The wealthy Roman of the upper classes wanted to enjoy his “luxury” (however one might care to define that). This essentially meant that he should be well-educated. His children received, from private tutors mostly originating from Greece, the best education one could imagine: one that remains, to this day, one of the best of any era. Even in Plato’s time...

I was recently asked how I found my way to the Classical authors, given that I am neither a historian nor a classical philologist. Many years ago in a library I came across a volume of Cicero, the “Letters to Atticus.”i I thumbed through the book, seeking nothing in particular, and was curious about certain passages that did not in...