ABSTRACT
Ancient philosophers typically revered the founder of their school as an exemplary role model, the closest mortal approximation to the ideal of the perfect philosophical sage. Many ancient philosophers appear sceptical as to whether any mortal could ever be elevated to the level of a perfect sage and the concept was widely treated as an imaginary ideal. The Epicureans were less ambiguous than the Stoics about the sage, whom they explicitly identified with the founder of their own school. Socrates was the pre-eminent example of the incarnate philosophical sage. There are certainly very few great thinkers in the history of academic philosophy who could be described as jovial, with the possible exception of Socrates. The sage may provide a concrete example from which specific principles of living, and verbal precepts or maxims, may be deduced.
