[...] The present volume is intended to show that the ideal of an at once sociohistorical and authentically philosophical approach to the spiritual life of the late Greek elites is still alive, and that a presentation of late antique philosophical life that does justice as much to the ideas themselves as to the circumstances in which they were studied and lived is a realizable aim. What follows is, then, work in progress, all destined to be presented more fully elsewhere. [...]