 On a continuum of political rule stretching from the sheer domination of some over others on one extreme, to a vision of collaborative deliberation among equals for the sake of the good life on the other, many ancient Greek and Roman political philosophers clearly staked out the latter ground. The very idea of the city and the civic bond as rooted in justice was common ground across much of the spectrum of ancient political philosophy. Even the Epicureans saw society as rooted in justice, although understanding justice in turn as rooted in  utility.[17]  Philosophers adhering to this approach were not however ignorant of possible objections to it. The diagnosis of politics as domination has never been more powerfully advanced than by Plato’s character Thrasymachus, nor has the attack on justice as a good life for the individual ever been as powerfully made as by Plato’s character Callicles or the skeptic Carneades. The nostalgic view of ancient political philosophy as predicated on widely shared conceptions of human nature and the human good, before the splintering and fracturing of modernity, is an oversimplification.