Posidonius Of Apamea (c.135-50 B.C.), the last of the great polymaths of the Hellenistic age; he wrote on geography, astronomy, and history, as well as
philosophy. His ideas influenced several Roman writers, including Sallust, Caesar, Tacitus, and especially Cicero, who studied under Posidomus in
Rhodes in 78.
(a) The first two centuries after Christ -were intensely conservative and traditional in their interests, and although it is doubtless true that under cover of a
devotion to the past they intruded their own particular concerns, it cannot be denied that in all branches of their literary activity the writers of the age
looked back to the great masterpieces of the golden age of Athens for their inspiration both in point of content and of style. It was their preoccupation
with style that led many of the writers of the Second Sophistic to devote a good deal of attention to Plato, and it was perhaps for that reason that the
philosophical renaissance of the age owes more to him than to Aristotle. As to content, most of the writers of the age can in general be classed as
Platonists. The interest in the more dogmatic side of Plato can be dated to the earlier part of the first century B.C. and is connected with the figure of
Antiochus of Ascalon, the first systematically to break away from the scepticism which had dominated the school since the days of Carneades (d. c.
129/8 B.C.). The devotion to Plato shows itself in a number of ways, but above all in the constant use of quotation from him and in the general adherence
to the main lines of his philosophy, the belief in the transcendence of God and in the immortality of the soul. So often were some of the commonplaces
of Plato repeated by the writers of the period, above all by Plutarch, Maximus, and Albinus, that it has been thought by some scholars that they possessed