Posidonius

Readers who know Posidonius only through scattered references will find this commentary a guide to the surviving testimonia and fragments edited in the first volume of Edelstein and Kidd's 1972 Cambridge edition. Posidonius ranks among the leading thinkers of the first-century BC Greco-Roman world. Kidd examines what roughly sixty ancient writers report about him, separating the views Posidonius actually held from the reinterpretations and misrepresentations introduced by those who recorded them.

Posidonius also wrote extensively on the sciences and geography and produced a substantial History. Kidd measures this material against the philosophical, scientific and historical works of Posidonius' predecessors and contemporaries. Each fragment is studied in its original context, in its philosophical and scientific substance, and in its connection to Posidonius' wider system and to the ideas circulating in his time.

The commentary grew too long for a single volume, so it appears in two separate books that can be purchased only together as a set.