To understand ancient philosophy in its concrete complex detail Michael Frede says, one has also to look at all the other histories to which it is tired by an intricate web of causal connections which run both ways. Frede's distinctive approach to the history of ancient philosophy is closely tied to his specific interests within the field the Hellenistic philosophers and those of late antiquity who are the primary subjects of this book. Long ignored or even maligned the Stoics and Skeptics medical philosopher and grammarians are extremely interesting once their actual views are reconstructed and it is possible to recognized once their ties to earlier and later philosophical thought. Refusing to study them as paradigms of achievementor to seek purely philosophical explanations for their views Frede draws instead upon those other histories or religion social structure law and politics to illuminate their work and to show how it was interpreted and transformed by succeeding generations.