Sean McConnell is Lecturer in Classics at the University of Otago.

'The author has done a great service in pushing far beyond the conclusions, now well-established, that Cicero could 'do' philosophy or fit it to a Roman audience. What the letters reveal - even more than the treatises, perhaps - was that Cicero was not merely putting favored doctrines into practice, but experimenting constantly with how ideas and political realities could reshape one another. A truly gifted intertextualist, McConnell shines brightest in his attention to the manifold ways in which Cicero engages his intellectual forebears.' Lex Paulson, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

• Introduction; 1. Exploring the relationship between philosophy and politics; 2. Cicero and Plato's Seventh Epistle; 3. Cicero and Dicaearchus; 4. A Stoic lecture: Epistulae ad familiares 9.22; 5. Dealing with Caesar: the συμβουλευτικόν; Conclusions.

Sean McConnell is Lecturer in Classics at the University of Otago.

'The author has done a great service in pushing far beyond the conclusions, now well-established, that Cicero could 'do' philosophy or fit it to a Roman audience. What the letters reveal - even more than the treatises, perhaps - was that Cicero was not merely putting favored doctrines into practice, but experimenting constantly with how ideas and political realities could reshape one another. A truly gifted intertextualist, McConnell shines brightest in his attention to the manifold ways in which Cicero engages his intellectual forebears.' Lex Paulson, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

• Introduction; 1. Exploring the relationship between philosophy and politics; 2. Cicero and Plato's Seventh Epistle; 3. Cicero and Dicaearchus; 4. A Stoic lecture: Epistulae ad familiares 9.22; 5. Dealing with Caesar: the συμβουλευτικόν; Conclusions.

Sean McConnell is Lecturer in Classics at the University of Otago.

'The author has done a great service in pushing far beyond the conclusions, now well-established, that Cicero could 'do' philosophy or fit it to a Roman audience. What the letters reveal - even more than the treatises, perhaps - was that Cicero was not merely putting favored doctrines into practice, but experimenting constantly with how ideas and political realities could reshape one another. A truly gifted intertextualist, McConnell shines brightest in his attention to the manifold ways in which Cicero engages his intellectual forebears.' Lex Paulson, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

• Introduction; 1. Exploring the relationship between philosophy and politics; 2. Cicero and Plato's Seventh Epistle; 3. Cicero and Dicaearchus; 4. A Stoic lecture: Epistulae ad familiares 9.22; 5. Dealing with Caesar: the συμβουλευτικόν; Conclusions.