The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. I. Stoicism in Classical Latin Literature, and: The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. II. Stoicism in Christian Latin Thought, and: Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism, and: Aristotle and the Stoics (review)

140 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 26:1 JANUARY 1988 cally they could not have thought of a loan as a means of productive investment. Prohibitions against usury made good sense so long as the economy was static and did not produce any surplus wealth, and money itself was conceived of as a means of facilitating exchange of goods. The question of the nature and justification of interest, as Langholm reminds us, is by no means a settled issue even in the ideologically and religiously divided contemporary world. "It is only when we ourselves possess a consistent theory of interest," writes Langholm wisely, "that we can blame another age for the lack of it." (150). There is only one criticism that I would make of this excellent book, and that concerns its title. The Aristotelian Analysis of Usury, without a subtitle, is somewhat misleading . The book is actually about the scholastic analysis of usury, and even granted Aristotle's towering presence in the Middle Ages, the scholastics were heirs to other sources as well. Besides, and this is important, their outlook was not the same as that of Aristotle. Perhaps Noonan's book preempted the most natural title. This said, it must be emphasized that the content of the book does justice to the subject. I must recommend this book to all students of economic and political thought for its brevity, sobriety , and intellectual substance. ANTHONY PAREL The University of Calgary Marcia L. Colish. The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. I. Stoicismm Classical Latin Literature. Studies in the History of Christian Thought, Vol. 34. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1985. Pp. x + 446. 144 Guilders. Marcia L. Colish. The Stoic Traditionfrom Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. II. Stoicismin Christian Latin Thought. Studies in the History of Christian Thought, Vol. 35. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1985. Pp. x + 336. i 16 Guilders. Brad Inwood. Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism. New York: The Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, 1985. Pp. x + 348. $29.95F . H. Sandbach. Aristotle and the Stoics. Supplementary Vol. No. 1o. Cambridge: Cambridge Philological Society, 1985. Pp. xi + 88. Paper, NP. Marcia L. Colish's The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages is a work of extraordinary ambition and energy. Finding fault with the methods of both philosophers and philologists, the author classifies her work rather as "intellectual history" (I: 5)- After a brief survey of Stoic doctrines (I: 7-6o), Colish explains what became of them at the hands of writers from Cicero to Martin of Braga. There is much here that is deserving of careful reading. The author rightly views the Stoic tradition---distinct from Stoicism itself--as an evolving entity constantly adapted and modified to meet the requirements of later ages. One might, therefore, speak with justification of Cicero's influence upon the Stoic tradition of the doctrine of natural law (II, 6o). Volume I's chapter on Cicero is outstanding in most respects, treating him as a thinker whose seemingly contradictory attitudes to Stoicism depended primarily upon the subject under discussion. In this way, skepticism in epistemology gave way to Stoicism in ethics BOOK REVIEWS 141 as the dominant philosophy. One of the author's greatest strengths lies in the synthesis and delincation of modern scholarly approaches to the many diverse authors and genres discussed, so that in a sense each chapter's review of scholarship nicely reproduces in minature the effect of the whole work: the isolation of"traditions" of interpretation surrounding the formulators of the Stoic tradition itself. (It is unfortunate, therefore, that the massive bibliographies of both volumes contain so few items published after 1975.) Colish reveals an especially intimate understanding of the details of Roman law, though the conclusions reached here are almost completely negative: that Stoic influence upon Roman law is rather limited. Volume II makes explicit as a guiding principle the important observation that the same author might exhibit both a positive and a negative attitude to Stoicism depending upon the immediate rhetorical requirements of the argument (II: 5). While often implicit in Volume I, this principle is descrying of earlier emphasis. For so much of ancient literature in...