This book – an English version (with revisions) of M.’s Capire e dissentire (2008) – treats Cicero's relationship to Epicurean philosophy, arguing that, although Cicero is hostile to Epicurean philosophy and occasionally misrepresents it for his own ends, he nevertheless exhibits a high level of competence in regard to Epicurean doctrine. As M. himself admits, the claim that Cicero's hostility to Epicurean philosophy comes from familiarity with the school, rather than ignorance of its views, is not novel; nor is the argument that Cicero frequently employs Epicurean philosophy as a ‘foil’ against which to set his own, favoured Academic Sceptic approach. This book's value lies, instead, in providing a comprehensive synopsis of the relevant information, comparing the treatment of various key topics in Cicero's philosophical texts with their Epicurean sources (with chapters devoted to Epicurean views on Physics, Theology, History of Philosophy, Hedonism and the Tetrapharmakon) and situating this discussion within Cicero's own intellectual biography. In so far as it collects together the relevant source material and provides a clear picture of the function of Epicurean material in Cicero's philosophical works, this volume will be of value to anyone who is interested in Cicero's intellectual development or the origins of Roman philosophy and does not have access to the original Italian text.

For those who do have access to the Italian original, however, the value of this work may be less clear. The translation into English has made this book much more difficult to read, while the revisions have done little to correct or improve upon the original. The English is clunky at the best of times, riddled with distracting errors of translation (e.g. the original's ‘in un libello di riposta’, literally: ‘in a responding pamphlet’, becomes the nonsensical ‘in a libel of response’ [p. 39]). On occasion, unfortunately, these translation issues serve to confuse the philosophical content of the discussion: for example, the discussion of the ‘realization’ (‘realizzazione’) of the Epicurean ultimate end at p. 196, while unambiguously denoting ‘fulfilment’ in the original Italian, could, in the English translation, equally be read psychologically as referring to the awareness of this end. The main revision, meanwhile, is the addition of a short afterword at the end of the monograph. While this afterword provides a useful survey of the work that has been produced on this subject since the publication of the original work in 2008, it is certainly not exhaustive, and none of these more recent works appears to have been integrated into the body of the text itself. This lack of revision also means that the problems identified in reviews of the Italian original remain – for example, the bibliographical gaps and occasionally meandering structure, which were noted in M. Schofield's review in this journal (CR 60 [2010], 438–9). In sum, then, while this new English version may be of use to readers who have no Italian, those who can read the original would do well to rely primarily on the earlier work.