Ancient Roman philosophy

Ancient Roman philosophy is philosophy as it was practiced in the Roman Republic and its successor state, the Roman Empire. Roman philosophy includes not only philosophy written in Latin, but also philosophy written in Greek in the late Republic and Roman Empire. Important early Latin-language writers include Lucretius, Cicero, and Seneca the Younger. Greek was a popular language for writing about philosophy, so much so that the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius chose to write his Meditations in Greek. Interest in philosophy was first excited at Rome in 155 BC, by an Athenian embassy consisting of the Academic skeptic Carneades, the Stoic Diogenes of Babylon, and the Peripatetic Critolaus. Roman philosophy was heavily influenced by Hellenistic philosophy; however, unique developments in philosophical schools of thought occurred during the Roman period as well, with many philosophers adapting teachings from more than one school. The Sabinian and Proculean schools of law, the two largest schools of legal thought in the Roman period, derived their understanding of ethics heavily from Stoicism and Epicureanism respectively, again providing a current for philosophical thought to influence life in the Roman period. Both leading schools of law of the Roman period, the Sabinian and the Proculean Schools, drew their ethical views from readings on the Stoics and Epicureans respectively, allowing for the competition between thought to manifest in a new field in Rome's jurisprudence. During the autocratic rule of the Flavian dynasty, a group of philosophers vocally and politically protested against imperial actions, particularly under Domitian and Vespasian. This resulted in Vespasian banishing all philosophers from Rome, save for Gaius Musonius Rufus; although he, too, was later banished. This event later became known as the Stoic Opposition, as a majority of the protesting philosophers were Stoics. Later in the Roman period, Stoics came to regard this opposition highly; however, the term "Stoic Opposition" was not coined until the 19th century, where it first appears in the writings of Gaston Boissier.