Jed Atkins has set himself a difficult task: to revise his doctoral thesis on Cicero's Rep. and Leg. (Cambridge, 2009) into a book that offers these texts as an untapped resource to enrich the tradition of political thought, while at the same time making them accessible to a broad readership. These are readers pursuing the political regions of philosophy, rather than Latin literature, and the book is careful not to assume too close a familiarity: ‘Cicero was not the first to analyze Rome in terms of the theory of the mixed constitution’ (80). Nor does it show consistency in dealing at first hand with existing scholarship. What it does provide is a careful and engaging interpretation of both dialogues, beginning with Rep., and then widening the discussion to include Leg., as well as relevant portions of Plato and Polybius. A range of post-Classical thinkers are brought in to show the evolution of the debates: Polybius/Cicero/Machiavelli works particularly well (83–93). The book presents a coherent, shapely argument: Cicero's use of dialogue is determinedly anti-dogmatic. Attentive reading shows that he is careful to give plausible but contrasting opinions to different speakers, and to allow contradictions between them to remain unresolved — even if it is sometimes clear to which view he gives greater weight. The dialogue method expresses a persistent methodological concern, one grounded in anxiety about the applicability of philosophy to questions of government, statecraft and law-making. Cicero uses his exploration of ratio to establish that reason can go only so far, and to point to the idea that science can have only a partial effect on the outcome of political affairs. In that way, the Somnium Scipionis is effectively integrated into a holistic interpretation of Rep. This established, A. explores what these works can contribute to a history of political thought. He finds in Cicero a nuanced view of constitutional change (ch. 3), a sophisticated definition of human rights and natural law (chs 4 and 5), and in ch. 6 discusses Cicero's treatment of the relationship between legislation and philosophical approaches to law (natural and otherwise), and its echoes in a range of later thinkers. In the conclusion, A. turns to evaluate Cicero's contribution to a particular strand of conservative thinking, the tradition of Burke, Oakshott and, to a lesser extent, Scruton. The provisional, exploratory character of Cicero's philosophy chimes with that tradition, though A. presents us with a more cautious Cicero, one who allows a greater rôle for potential utopias in his version of realism.

The discussion of political ideas is dominated by close analysis of particular passages. A. emerges as a well-intentioned and diligent reader, keen to get Cicero's ideas to do as much work as possible. But there are problems. He sticks so closely to the texts that even readers who are familiar with them will need to concentrate hard to follow the explication. Readers unfamiliar will have much more work to do. A clearly defined methodology might have made their lives easier, but A. never explains what his technique of reading will be. The way he moves between text, thematic threads that sometimes seem only tangentially related, the sources for Cicero's ideas and the effect they had on later thinkers, produces a texture that is at times too dense to be illuminating. Then there is the dominance of the idea that for Cicero, ‘reason in its pure form is divine’ (5). I am not certain this way of describing Cicero's thought is either accurate or helpful, though it is central to understanding what kind of philosophy we think Cicero is producing. There are moments where the presentation of the text in English is distorted by that argument. So, when discussing Scipio's history of Rome in Rep. 1, A. comments, ‘Scipio has ignored chance and necessity in order to provide a completely rational account of political developments’ (59). He does not remind us that the dialogue itself (i.e. Laelius) applies those concepts to Scipio's history, and so to describe it as such a rationalistic production is misleading. Then moving to discuss Rep. 2.57 (61), A. has Scipio observe that ‘the very nature of public affairs often overcomes reason’ (echoing Zetzel's translation). The Latin (not provided) reads ‘uincit ipsa rerum publicarum natura saepe rationem’. The sense of the passage is not of reason overcome in the absolute sense, but rather of the turn of events proving superior to reason. The increase in popular power that Scipio is describing (the aftermath of the first plebeian secession) did not occur as a result of a plan, but nevertheless the outcome is one of which Scipio approves. Momentarily, Cicero exposes his aristocratic condescension. The defeat of ratio here is not a manifestation of the hopelessness of reason as an absolute concept in face of intractable circumstance, so much as a demonstration that natura and ratio can often work together in a providential manner. And although keen on the Stoic context for the discussion of natural law in Leg., A. mysteriously neglects Stoic providence, even in his discussion of Polybius’ constitutional theory. Could the explanation lie in a failure to respond to moments where less conservative politics are in play?

There is much to learn here, and many moments of impressive philosophical dissection. But I am not convinced that A. has as tight a control over his own arguments as the ‘political thought’ approach would suggest, and I was often uneasy about how (as in the example above) he pressed concepts in an excerpted translation in the interests of getting his argument to the next stage.