Abstract

Sharples’s new introduction aims at providing a survey of the major Hellenistic philosophical schools to an audience with little or no background in philosophy or classics. Drawing on his experience teaching the subject to Classics undergraduates, he aims to present Hellenistic thought as a subject that might speak directly to the concerns of students. At this the book is successful. It is an ambitious task for a narrative of 133 pages: if the exposition seems at some points a bit rushed it is surely from the sheer difficulty of reconciling clarity and sophistication with brevity. The result is readable and interesting at different levels.