The Philosopher's Banquet: Plutarch's Table Talk in the Intellectual Culture of the Roman Empire

Abstract

This book offers readers a coherent but diverse set of analyses of Plutarch's Table Talk, a late work, which, like many essays in this prolific Middle Platonic philosopher's corpus, scholars have left shamefully unexplored. The volume aims both to orientate readers, and to offer a set of studies that examine Table Talk through different interpretative lenses, highlighting its themes, literary structures, and its place in Plutarch's wider oeuvre. Miscellanistic literature flourished during the high Roman Empire in the first and second centuries CE, and this book seeks to uncover the text's contribution to a culture in which Greek and Roman interactions were more dynamic than ever before. Table Talk is the earliest fully extant imperial Greek miscellanistic text. The chapters in the volume draw attention to its place in the Graeco-Roman tradition of miscellanistic literature that followed. They explore its philosophical and scientific preoccupations, and raise questions about the rhetorical and discursive devices through which Plutarch presents his material. The objective of the book is to stimulate conversation about a work in which dialogue and discussion are themselves essential elements.