Do the gods love you? Cicero gives deep and surprising answers in two philosophical dialogues on traditional Roman religion.

Cicero was keenly interested in Greek philosophy and his philosophical books were an important popular vehicle of Greek philosophy in later ages. Professor MacKendrick presents a useful conspectus of all Cicero's philosophical books with an analysis of their structure, background and intention. His thesis is that most if not all of them are cast in a rhetorical form; that for Cicero rhetoric and philosophy have the same goals: proving his point, winning adherents to it and stimulating his auditory, for most of these books are conceived as dialogues. Unity of form suggests that Cicero planned them as a unified whole. Ironically, their very charm of style has caused them to be dubbed superficial and unoriginal, but Cicero lived with philosophers all his life, and many an alleged source may in fact be a set of ideas assimilated by a well-read mind. Open-minded readers will respond warmly to his high morality, his respect for the rule of law, his humanism, scepticism and flair. A final chapter and appendix outline the immense influenc that Cicero's philosophical books exerted on the history of European thought.

This book presents Cicero's natural law theory, including valuable definitions of the state, the ideal state, the ideal ruler, and the laws for the ideal state. Explanations are offered of the Greek sources of Cicero's republican philosophy, his influence on the Principate of Augustus, and his role in the development of modern political philosophy. As all the ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher united than Cicero, his authority should have great weight (John Adams, 1787).

Cicero's philosophical works are a rich source for the understanding of Hellenistic philosophy, and his Academic Books are of critical importance for the study of ancient epistemology, especially the central debate between the Academic sceptics and the Stoics. This volume makes Cicero's challenging work accessible to philosophers and historians of philosophy and represents the best current work in both fields. The ten papers published here are the work of leading authorities from North America, England and Europe; they were presented and discussed at the seventh Symposium Hellenisticum at Utrecht, August 1995, and deal with every aspect of the Academic Books, historical, literary and philosophical. Several papers make major contributions to the understanding of ancient scepticism and sceptical arguments, to the role of Socrates in later Greek thought, to the history of the Academy as an institution, and to the philosophical stance of Cicero himself.

Cicero is one of the most important and influential thinkers within the history of Western philosophy. For the last thirty years, his reputation as a philosopher has once again been on the rise after close to a century of very low esteem. This Companion introduces readers to 'Cicero the philosopher' and to his philosophical writings. It provides a handy port-of-call for those interested in Cicero's original contributions to a wide variety of topics such as epistemology, the emotions, determinism and responsibility, cosmopolitanism, republicanism, philosophical translation, dialogue, aging, friendship, and more. The international, interdisciplinary team of scholars represented in this volume highlights the historical significance and contemporary relevance of Cicero's writings, and suggests pathways for future scholarship on Cicero's philosophy as we move through the twenty-first century.

Why philosophy was politics by other means for Rome's greatest statesman In the 40s BCE, during his forced retirement from politics under Caesar's dictatorship, Cicero turned to philosophy, producing a massive and important body of work. As he was acutely aware, this was an unusual undertaking for a Roman statesman because Romans were often hostile to philosophy, perceiving it as foreign and incompatible with fulfilling one's duty as a citizen. How, then, are we to understand Cicero's decision to pursue philosophy in the context of the political, intellectual, and cultural life of the late Roman republic? In A Written Republic, Yelena Baraz takes up this question and makes the case that philosophy for Cicero was not a retreat from politics but a continuation of politics by other means, an alternative way of living a political life and serving the state under newly restricted conditions. Baraz examines the rhetorical battle that Cicero stages in his philosophical prefaces—a battle between the forces that would oppose or support his project. He presents his philosophy as intimately connected to the new political circumstances and his exclusion from politics. His goal—to benefit the state by providing new moral resources for the Roman elite—was traditional, even if his method of translating Greek philosophical knowledge into Latin and combining Greek sources with Roman heritage was unorthodox. A Written Republic provides a new perspective on Cicero's conception of his philosophical project while also adding to the broader picture of late-Roman political, intellectual, and cultural life.