Book Reviews
Abstract
The Structured Self in Hellenistic and Roman Thought Christopher Gill: The Structured Self in Hellenistic and Roman Thought . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, pp. xxii + 522. ISBN 978-0-19-815268-2 Christopher Gill's recent book is both intellectually and physically substantial. Its 500 pages of careful argument and detailed scholarship form a sequel to his previous book Personality in Greek Epic, Tragedy, and Philosophy in which he examined conceptions of personality and self from Homer to the beginnings of Hellenistic thought. In this new work Gill moves forwards to explore conceptions of the self in Hellenistic and Roman thought, and he promises us a further volume devoted to the second century AD (esp. Galen and Marcus Aurelius) to complete a trilogy. The work is divided into three main sections. The first part examines the concept of the structured self in Stoicism and Epicureanism, and this is perhaps the most important part of the work in terms of its programmatic agenda. The second part focuses in on the Stoic theory of the passions and its relationship with Platonism, paying particular attention to Platonist readers of the Stoic theory such as Plutarch and Galen. This effectively functions as a case study