This book studies the dominant philosophical reflections on religion and the pantheon in the Post-Hellenistic period. It does not do so from the perspective of the history of religion, as is usual, but attempts to understand these readings as part of the wider tendency of Post-Hellenistic philo-sophy to open up to external, non-philosophical sources of knowledge and authority. Rather than interpreting philosophical views on religion of this period as the direct result of changes in religious mentality, I propose to study how they fit into the philosophical discourse and how they can be understood in the light of specific characteristics of Post-Hellenistic philo-sophy. In particular, the book argues that although religion can be termed an external source of knowledge, it is not an independent one: religion is reinterpreted to fit the philosophical position of the interpreter and is allowed to enter the philosophical argument only when domesticated in that way. Focusing on two key themes and their polemical reconfigurations, this book suggests that Post-Hellenistic philosophy can be seen to have a relatively high degree of unity in its ideas on religion, which should not be reduced to a preparation for Neoplatonism. This unity should not be understood in the sense that all philosophers share the same doctrines, but rather that they share the same presuppositions and approaches.

From the end of the second century bc onwards major shifts can be identified in the way that philosophy was practised. Besides showing up certain new doctrinal developments, the following centuries, often labelled the ‘Post-Hellenistic period’ (first century bc – second century ad), are characterised by a return to classical traditions, seen as authoritative, in particular to Plato and Aristotle. In his epilogue to the Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy (1999), M. Frede draws attention to the renewal of Aristotelianism and the collapse of Academic Scepticism after Antiochus of Ascalon's (c. 130–68/7 bc) break with the Sceptic tradition of his teacher Philo of Larissa and his return to Plato's doctrines as preserved in the Old Academy. This entailed more than a change in doctrine. H. Tarrant has pointed out that in contrast to Philo of Larissa, the last Sceptic scholarch of the Academy (158/7--84/3 bc), for whom the essential feature of a philosophical school was participation in the debating culture and internal intellectual life of that school, Antiochus emphasised doctrinal agreement. He thus needed a venerable source of authority, which he found in the Old Academy, to distinguish between the true doctrine and deviations from it. Notwithstanding the fragmentary nature of the evidence, it is possible to pinpoint a similar tendency in the Stoa. Indeed, the two towering figures of Late Hellenistic Stoicism, Panaetius (c. 185–109 bc) and Posidonius (c. 135–55 bc), not only are credited with major innovations but also started to look at Plato and Aristotle as authoritative sources of philosophical knowledge – with the latter tendency shaping the former.