Nathan Gilbert, Margaret Graver, Sean McConnell (eds.): Power and Persuasion in Cicero’s Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2023. X, 268 pp.

Having been excluded from active political participation in the last years of an institutionally devitalized res publica, Cicero has the opportunity to reflect extensively on the cultural and ethical causes of the crisis at hand. This is because he immediately understands that the philosophical training he has acquired across the years could represent an essential resource for the pursuit of political activity through alternative channels. As he recognizes, however, philosophy itself could not successfully reach its practical goals without the persuasive strategies necessary to communicate intellectual findings. While the issue of the performative relevance of rhetoric and persuasion in Cicero’s political and forensic speeches has been widely recognized in Ciceronian scholarship,1 the issue of the nature of the theoretical relationship between philosophy and rhetoric in his philosophical works remains less explored. The co-edited volume ‘Power and Persuasion in Cicero’s Philosophy’ successfully contributes towards filling this gap, as it provides a careful treatment of the main dialectical and rhetorical instruments at work in Cicero’s philosophy. The ten essays contained in the book ultimately show that rhetorical persuasion might offer a new perspective for understanding the most significant philosophic (and, more specifically, philosophic-political) concepts contained in his writings.