The work by Helen De Cruz which impacted me the most was Friendship with the Ancients, which explains a philosophical method and imaginative exercise which involves engaging with deceased authors as companions and friends. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

One of the ways I have been trying to practice this is with ancient women Platonists, with help from Crystal Addey's new Element on the topic. A big part of this is just coming to know the communities they were embedded in and the tradition which informed them. www.cambridge.org/core/element...

We only get glimpses of most of these philosophers. Sosipatra, mythologized into a psychic saint by later Neoplatonists. Axiothea, the political philosopher who wore men's clothes. Clea, Eurydice, and Timoxena, the women philosophers we learn about through Plutarch.

For De Cruz, friendship with the ancients helps cultivate the epistemic virtue of relational understanding. "We do not become friends in the abstract. Crucially, we become friends with someone, who has their own viewpoint and engagement with the world."

The difficulty for this topic and set of people is that we've lost almost all of their writings, we only have indirect access to their viewpoints. Our friendship has to be one of reconstruction, channeling what we know about their ideas, jobs, and families to develop philosophical projects.