ARISTOTLE TO AUGUSTINE Cicero Cicero himself was eclectic in his philosophy, which is a boon to the historian, since his writings provide information about a variety of philosophical tendencies He made his Wrst acquaintance with the diVerent philosophical schools when he studied in Athens in his late twenties Later he studied at Rhodes under the Stoic Posidonius He was greatly inXuenced by Philo of Larissa, the last head of the Academy, who came to Rome from Athens in 88 bc He kept in his house, as personal guru, the Stoic Diodotus until his death in 60 For a long time Cicero’s busy life in politics and in the courts did not leave him much leisure for any philosophy except political philosophy In the late 50s he imitated Plato by writing a Republic and a Laws, which have survived only in part He withdrew from public life, however, when Julius Caesar came to supreme power after a civil war in which he himself had taken the opposite side Cicero spent much of Caesar’s dictatorship in literary activity, and after the death of his only daughter, Tullia, in February 45 he wrote ever more frantically so as to forget his grief Most of his philosophical works were written in the years 45 and 44 The two Wrst in the series are now lost, a Consolatio on the death of Tullia, and the Hortensius, an exhortation to the study of philosophy that was to play a dramatic part in the life of St Augustine Ten other works, however, survive, impressive in their range and eloquence Cicero set himself the task of creating a Latin philosophical vocabulary, so that Romans could study philosophy in their own language Many, indeed, of the philosophical terms of modern languages derive from his Latin coinages In his own opinions, he took elements from diVerent philosophical tendencies In epistemology he favoured the moderate sceptical opinion that he had learnt from Philo: he presents the academic system and its variants in his Academica, which appeared in two diVerent versions In ethics he favoured the Stoic rather than the Epicurean tradition He looked to moral philosophy for consolation and reassurance In his de Finibus and Tusculan Disputations he writes, often with great passion and beauty, on the relation between emotion, virtue, and happiness His works On the Nature of the Gods and On Fate contain interesting discussions of philosophical theology and the issue of determinism, and his On 103