Ancient Wisdom and Platonism

The project aims at offering an innovative perspective on the reception of Plato by exploring ‘Platonist theories of ancient wisdom’. Specifically, it investigates how philosophers during the Roman Imperial Era (1st c. BC to 2nd c. AD) construed Plato’s place in history and relationship with earlier wisdom traditions. Through identifying, translating and analysing relevant, often underexplored writings of ten Platonist philosophers, it contends that, contrary to modern expectations, Plato’s ancient heirs viewed his philosophy as an expression of time-honoured teachings already embraced by a multitude of nations and sages, including Egyptians, Persians, Indians, and Jews. Through making new evidence accessible, analysing argumentative substructures, and contextualising historical and intellectual aspects, the conclusion challenges the tendency to marginalise the Platonists’ interest in traditional wisdom and ‘barbarian religion’ as superficial romanticism. On the contrary, the findings bear testimony to the earnest and sophisticated intellectual involvement of a range of Platonists with foreign traditions of learning. Crucially, they also reveal meaningful differences in attitude, methodology, and reasoning among the Platonists, thereby altering how we read these figures, both individually as thinkers in their own right, and collectively as part of a larger Platonic tradition.