During the summer of 46 Cicero’s mind turned to questions of philosophy. After producing a squib on the Stoic ethical system, Stoic Paradoxes (Paradoxa stoicorum), Cicero committed himself to a much more ambitious enterprise. This was nothing more nor less than an attempt to give a comprehensive account of Greek philosophy in the Latin language. For one hundred years or so there had been numerous references to Greek philosophers and their doctrines in Roman literature, but there had been few serious books on philosophical themes. Such as there were mainly concerned Epicureanism, a way of life
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