No "Roman" Philosophy? Greek mythology was the matrix, the inexhaustible store of material out of which evolved not only Greek literature but also Greek science and philosophy. The people who would become the Romans were related to the Greeks, and they originally shared that mythology, but they converted much of it into their founding legends and early political history. Lacking that core material and the productive contacts that the Greeks had with the East and Egypt, Rome had no native philosophy.

Awareness of Greece. Classical Greek culture flowered during the mid fifth century B.C.E., especially in Athens. Greek influence extended to southern Italy through the many Greek colonial cities there, and to central Italy through trade and political contacts with the Etruscan aristocracy. At that very time Rome was still a small rural town, struggling to preserve its...