The Philosophical Life: Biography and the Crafting of Intellectual Identity in Late Antiquity

Ancient biographies were more than accounts of the deeds of past heroes and guides for moral living. They were also arenas for debating pressing philosophical questions and establishing intellectual credentials, as Arthur P. Urbano argues in this study of biographies composed in Late Antiquity. With its origins in the competing philosophical schools of Hellenistic Greece, the genre of the "philosophical life" provided verbal portraits of paradigmatic figures - usually rulers and philosopher...