Hegel’s often-echoed verdict on the apolitical character of philosophy in the Hellenistic age is challenged in this collection of new essays, originally presented at the sixth meeting of the Symposium Hellenisticum. An international team of leading scholars reveals a vigorous intellectual scene of great diversity: analyses of political leadership and the Roman constitution in Aristotelian terms; Cynic repudiation of the polis - but accommodation with its rulers; Stoic and Epicurean theories of justice as the foundation of society; Cicero’s moral critique of the traditional political pursuit of glory. The volume as a whole offers a fresh and comprehensive guide to the main currents of social and political philosophy in a period of increasing interest to classicists, philosophers and cultural and intellectual historians.