Exciting news from the world of philosophy! Next year will see the 20th anniversary of the New Stoa, an online community of ‘all those who are Stoics and who wish to be known by the commitment they have made’. Stoicism, the philosophy of choice for sanctimonious Roman billionaires, is evidently making a comeback. Its appeal, to an age obsessed equally by smartphones and virtue signalling, is no great mystery, I suppose. Seneca, who served as Nero’s tutor and whose manipulation of the overseas currency markets may well have precipitated Boudicca’s revolt, was a Stoic. ‘Though finding fault with the rich, he acquired a fortune of 300,000,000 sesterces,’ wrote the historian Dio Cassius; ‘and though he censured the extravagances of others, he had 500 tables of citrus wood with legs of ivory, all identically alike.’ Truly, there is something timeless about ancient philosophers.
That being so, might they perhaps provide us with some further role models? If Stoicism can find buyers in today’s marketplace of ideas, what about other ancient philosophies, religions and cults? Antiquity, the breeding ground which gave the world its two most popular faiths, had so much more to offer than Christianity and Islam.
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