This book offers an innovative account of Cicero's treatment of key political ideas: liberty and equality, government, law, cosmopolitanism and imperialism, republican virtues, and ethical decision-making in politics. Cicero (106-43 BC), a major figure in Roman politics, was the first to articulate a philosophical rationale for republicanism.

Malcolm Schofield has taught ancient philosophy in Cambridge for close on 50 years, and is a wide-ranging and highly productive scholar, of major international standing. He joined G.S. Kirk and J.E. Raven as co-author of The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge 1983 [second edition]). With Jonathan Barnes and M.F. Burnyeat he co-founded in 1978 a long-running series of Symposia Hellenistica, which have done much to foster work of high quality on a previously understudied area of Greek and Roman philosophy. He has also been active more broadly in UK Classics, most recently as Chair of the British School at Athens (2010-16).

• 1: Introduction: contexts


• 2: Liberty, equality, and popular sovereignty


• 3: Government


• 4: Cosmopolitanism, imperialism, and the idea of law


• 5: Republican virtues


• 6: Republican decision-making


• 7: Epilogue: philosophical debate and normative theory


• Bibliography


• Index of passages


• General index