forthcoming, Plato's Women Readers

Women were members of almost every philosophical school and movement that existed in antiquity, including the Epicurean community, the Garden, the Cynic movement where we hear especially of Hipparchia wife of Crates, the Neoplatonic philosophical schools of late antiquity, all of which included female philosophers as well as male, and, if the relevant evidence is reliable, within the Pythagorean communities and within Plato’s Academy. This paper will consider and examine the historical evidence of women reading and engaging with Plato’s texts in antiquity and the evidence for the presence of female philosophers within the Platonic tradition, from the fourth century B.C through to the sixth century AD. Female philosophers such as Lastheneia, Axiothea, Sosipatra and Hypatia will be examined. Many later female philosophers were priestesses and prophetesses as well as philosophers and in this respect the figure of Diotima who features in Plato’s Symposium seems to have acted as a crucial role model for some of these women.