In the Ciceronian renaissance of the last generation and a half there has occurred a persistent and largely successful effort to go beyond identification of Cicero's sources and to find his distinctive voice. Z. starts from and affirms that development. In pursuing an understanding of the nature and function of Cicero's ideal statesman (rector rei publicae), he takes his readers in both methodology and findings beyond that foundational commitment and presents a book marked by bold and intriguing interpretations. The focus of his interpretative work is on Cicero's writings of the 50s, primarily De oratore, De re publica and De legibus. In that ‘coherent trilogy’ the concept of the model statesman emerges, and Z. will follow it throughout Cicero's life and find in it the central and unifying concept for Cicero's political philosophy and an aspirational goal for Cicero's active political life.

Already one might notice Z.'s remarkable reach in his inquiry and a finding, however welcome to this reviewer, that stands in stark contrast to what many have thought through the ages. Z. initially reveals the reach in his very title, the ideal statesman both in theory and practice. That translates into an inquiry prepared to go anywhere in Cicero's works and life to pursue the topic and specifically how the concept of the ideal statesman functioned for Cicero as political actor. He extensively utilises Cicero's letters and speeches, the literary basis for Cicero's practice. This is not simply a book about political theory or philosophy; it is about theory shaping and being shaped by practice.

The especially surprising conclusion is his finding Cicero consistent across the genres of his corpus and the various periods of his life. It is a consistency not only in political understanding or theory, but also in Cicero's effort for a practice that fits that theory and that is internally consistent through the changes and turmoil all around him. It takes interpretative analyses of texts, actions and events for Z. to make that case, and he argues that his discovery of the centrality of the model statesman as practical model allows one to see that consistency. Z. clearly understands Cicero as Cicero wants to understand himself.

Z. wisely begins his inquiry into the texts where the concept of the model statesman emerges with attention to Cicero's scepticism. He draws on the fruit of the considerable attention to this aspect of Cicero in the scholarship on Hellenistic philosophy and concludes that Cicero's ‘mitigated’ Philonian scepticism was his life-long position and that it was a scepticism which did not countenance moral relativism and thus political opportunism as some have suggested. Cicero's allegiance to the school of Academic scepticism is seen to equip him with a disposition towards and a methodology for testing contending positions, in theory and practice and thus with respect to all questions and aspects of Cicero's life and to the very end of that life. It was an allegiance that characterised a way of being, marked by inquiry into contending positions as well as alternative courses of action.

Z. emphasises scepticism's role in the realisation of Cicero's intentions. The dominant example of this in the book can highlight the distinctive interpretative line that Z. takes. In looking at the major text for his purpose, De re publica, Z. chooses not to attend particularly to Philus' Carneadean arguments against the reality of a true natural justice in Book 3, the conventional point of juncture between scepticism and the overall teaching of De re publica, but rather to see the Academic method at work in the previous two books and especially in the emergence there of Cicero's favourable disposition to monarchy.

Z. concedes that it is the mixed regime, after the Roman model, rather than monarchy, that wins the overall contest in Cicero's eyes for the best constitution. However, he sees in Cicero's unRoman favourable disposition to monarchy, Cicero's ‘forgiving attitude toward greater individual power’ (p. 3), a sense of the important role singular figures may and might play in saving the Republic or, at the least, in protecting the liberty and degree of justice the Republic could and often did serve. So it is in this intriguing interpretation that the role of the rector rei publicae, seen first clearly as a critical and prudent leader in making the mixed constitution work, comes to function as a vehicle of hope in Cicero's moving away from the concordia ordinum of mixed government as a way of saving the Republic.

In Cicero's later years that model statesman becomes ever more the template against which Cicero measures not only himself but also those whom he and Rome might follow. Pompey, especially given his year as single consul, creates great expectations, and Caesar raises up possibilities. One of the highlights of Z.'s book is his deft exploration of Cicero's Caesarian speeches where he sees the template of the model statesman as providing the basis for the ironical praise Cicero extends to Caesar and for Cicero's own suitability for a return to leadership. Yet in his time after Caesar's assassination Cicero's striving to act consistently with the ideal seems to have doomed himself and the Republic by unrealistic expectations that not only made Antony such a contemptuous disappointment but also perhaps contributed to Cicero's own misjudgements in his last days. Z. concludes that the rector rei publicae as an ideal had failed.

Z.'s judgement that failure has occurred appears to hinge on his seeing the ideal from the beginning as a ‘personal construct’ for Cicero and thus one that would fail when Cicero and necessarily his role in saving the Republic came to an end. That interpretative choice deserves further discussion. To this reader, it reveals that Z. tends at one and the same time to undervalue the practical thrust of Cicero as thinker and writer and then to overvalue it by measuring it narrowly in terms of pay-off in Cicero's active political life. The under-appreciation here is of a theory or philosophical approach that is oriented to practice, that highlighted by the Socratic turn and manifested in Aristotle's ethical and political treatises. The Socratic turn towards what is most worth discussing is so explicitly endorsed in Cicero's prologue and the early part of the dialogue of Book 1 of De re publica. That is the setting for the conversations that represent Cicero's Roman twist on Plato. Z. emphasises that Cicero forged the concept of the ideal statesman from Greek and Roman sources, yet at the same time he is saying things about theory that seem to assert Cicero is bound up with a purely personal project whose horizons are bounded by his personal success and the Republic's salvation. In the end, Cicero is not that small. Cicero did not fail in contributing significantly to an understanding of the best practicable regime and of the critical role of the model statesman in that regime. That was an achievement on the path Socrates indicated, and of course when Cicero spoke in this vein, he spoke with the benefit of Roman and personal experience.

One wonders why Z. should feel the need to flatter our age so by suggesting that Cicero's criticisms of democracy (and Plato's behind these) reflect ‘personal bias and practical considerations’ (p. 27). Furthermore it should be noted that the ‘virulent’ criticisms that especially concern Z. are not in the persona of Cicero or, for that matter, Scipio in De re publica. One can, of course, only be disappointed in a few instances against a background of appreciation for a book that is not disappointing but rather a welcome contribution that draws us effectively to a greater understanding of Cicero's consistency as a thinker and political leader.