Well before the current interest in reception studies of the great writers of antiquity, there was a practice of closing an introduction to one of their works or to a monograph on their thinking with at least a nod at their influence down through the ages. A paragraph or even a chapter might be given to their legacy or impact, or a tradition they spawned however troubled it might be. In the case of Cicero, that practice was in evidence even in the dark century that followed Theodor Mommsen's shallow but ‘devastating evaluation of Cicero’ (p. 200). While Mommsen's negative assessment was quite total, diminishing Cicero as a man, philosopher, political leader and orator, others through this period had to concede that Cicero was, at the least, a master of Latin prose and an effective orator. Whatever the evaluation of the different facets of Cicero, one thing is clear to any fair-minded student of the Western tradition: as M. Schofield put it in his recent book Cicero: Political Philosophy, Cicero has ‘massive historical importance’ (2021, p. 1).

This very fine collection of short but well-researched essays sets a standard for what reception studies can be. Each essay explores the engagement of Cicero's moral and political theory by a powerful and influential mind in the Western tradition. The essays are instances where the received and the receiver come to be understood better through their interaction and the analysis of the authors. These encounters can stimulate and guide our serious political thinking in the here and now, always, let us be reminded, the purpose of studies in the history of political theory. D. Hammer in the final essay of this collection, one focused on engagements of Cicero in the last half-century, observes that recent scholarship has ‘largely rewritten Mommsen's assessment of Cicero’, and he surmises ‘that Cicero has renewed interest for political theorists because he speaks to some of the same tensions that haunt contemporary politics’ (p. 216). Readers will be justly indebted to the editors, Kapust and Remer, for the idea that gave rise to this handsomely produced volume and for guiding the project to completion.

Before Hammer's final chapter, there are nine chapters each treating a specific encounter between the texts of Cicero and a subsequent thinker in the Western humanistic tradition. In this order, the chapters consider Augustine (B. Turner), John of Salisbury (C. Nederman), Thomas More (Remer), Machiavelli (M. Clarke), Montaigne (E. MacPhail), Hobbes (Kapust), Locke (E. Nacol), Adam Smith (M. Schwarze) and Burke (D. O'Neill). Among these, only Machiavelli and Hobbes are shown to contest with Cicero rather than appreciate him or appropriate his thinking or follow him in some respect. On the received or Cicero side of reception, all the chapters are concerned with his political and ethical writings or his actions as a political leader. Nearly all take but one aspect of Cicero as the basis for engagement by the receiver. Turner looks particularly at how Cicero's consideration of the true res publica is appropriated and changed by Augustine. O'Neill focuses on the parallels in context and substance between Cicero's orations against Verres and those of Burke directed at Warren Hastings. While having such specific foci, all chapters make some statement about the receiver's general stance on Cicero. Nederman's masterful essay on John of Salisbury illustrates the one instance in the volume of a comprehensive appropriation of Cicero from his epistemology to his practical turn. There is in this case the Christian difference that led John to be called the ‘Christian Cicero’, an accolade also given to Lactantius earlier and Thomas More later. Nederman's essay shows the strengths of an experienced scholar who has focused in the past both on the received, Cicero, and the receiver, John. Yet the more junior scholars on display in this volume make excellent contributions to the endeavour and raise expectations for the role Cicero will play in future teaching and research about Western political theory.

It is remarkable that all the contributors but one (MacPhail, a scholar of French literature) are political theorists teaching in political science departments. In addition, their chapters are richly and substantially annotated where one finds many more of the political theorists who have worked on Cicero's texts in the renaissance of Cicero studies over the last two generations. This volume becomes then something of a testimonial to the significant role political theorists have played in the robust renewal of interest in Cicero. One further word, and it concerns the rich footnotes: it begins by noting that this volume has no bibliography, which might often be thought a significant lacuna in a collection such as this. As it happens, the notes after each chapter function very well as bibliographies that are centred on the encounter displayed in that specific chapter. Whether, for example, a student is interested in Hobbes's rejection of Cicero or Montaigne being haunted by Cicero the philosopher, they can be directed to a properly focused bibliography rather than left to rifle through a long bibliography at the back of the book. These bibliographies will often be consulted not only by students of Cicero, but also by those studying the various engagers of the Ciceronian legacy treated in this book.

Another remarkable feature of this collection is the evidence it provides on how influential a part of Cicero's ethical and political legacy is his last philosophical piece, De officiis. This is not entirely surprising since De re publica was largely lost throughout the lives of all the receivers of Cicero considered in this volume except Augustine and those treated in the final chapter by Hammer. Politics, as the editors observe, is central to De officiis (p. 5). Quentin Skinner has often noted the huge importance of this text to Renaissance humanism, and readers are not likely to be surprised at Machiavelli's intent to turn this text on its head. One discovers that especially in the last years of their lives Montaigne and Locke were deeply engaged with De officiis. Locke, though rarely mentioning Cicero by name in his writings and never explicitly in his political discourses, regarded De officiis almost definitively his favourite piece of writing in his library, which came to hold at least seven different editions. He recommended it and the Bible as the best written guides to ‘the proper conduct of life’ (pp. 140, 153). Adam Smith drew much from De officiis in working out his understanding of resentment in the context of his theory of justice. Beyond such eye-catchers, nearly all the essays show in their close analyses the detailed and notable impact of De officiis. That is an important indication of the role of this work of Cicero in expressing the now often beleaguered moral infrastructure of Western ethical and political thought.

Of the many riches in this volume, there are a few that reviewer's privilege allows me to highlight as significant and even in some cases fascinating. Clarke, for one instance, takes on a worked over topic in diving into Machiavelli's critical engagement with Cicero's De officiis, but she brings readers to a new level in an illuminating essay. Her piece explores Cicero's concept of societas and how alien it is to Machiavelli; at the same time, she treats with fresh insights the terms honestum and utile, which constitute the basic problematic on which De officiis turns. Nederman treats us to a fascinating foray into Cicero's and John of Salisbury's handling of friendship and flattery where Cicero's De amicitia comes into play. It is likewise fascinating to be introduced to MacPhail's consideration of Montaigne's final revision of his Essais (the C text) with its extensive addition of passages from Cicero. With these additional materials and employing essays of Montaigne other than his famed ‘Considération sur Cicéron’, MacPhail ‘traces Montaigne's response to the ethical and political thought and the political choices of Cicero whose exemplarity [he] is never fully able to resist’ (p. 104). Finally, it was a delight to read Hammer's perceptive way of expressing his uneasiness, shared at times by this reviewer, with the civic republican tradition's appropriation of Cicero. While crediting civic republican interpretations of Cicero with giving him space in contemporary discourse, he observes that the nuance of Cicero's political thought ‘was often lost in service to a tradition’ (p. 207).

This reviewer's sole concern or perplexity about this book regards the unclear meaning of ‘the rhetorical approach’. The editors suggest it plays some important role in drawing this collection together though it is hard to see just how except in the case of Remer's piece on Thomas More, where Cicero and More are portrayed as sharing ‘rhetorical values’ (p. 61). Later O'Neill echoes a distinction Remer stresses when he observes that ‘Burke saw himself as inheriting Cicero's rhetorical approach not only stylistically but also substantively’ (p. 179). What is this approach in a ‘substantive’ way? Would it not have been sufficient in speaking of this book as a collection about Cicero's practical philosophy, which the editors also do, to observe that in a practical approach to philosophy the role of rhetoric is elevated. It then might also be noted that for Cicero, so thoroughly schooled and then practised in rhetoric, certain features of his theory and practice appear in his philosophy, such as applying decorum to an action or even a life rather than simply to a speech, valuing the encounter of different views on an issue in the course of seeking the probably true, and always being sensitive to the opinion of those who must be persuaded. Remer suggests something like this in the opening to his essay, but, as the piece proceeds, the rhetorical grows into a nebulous counter ‘philosophy’ to the caricature of philosophy More portrayed in Raphael Hytholday's outlook in Utopia. It is not ‘rhetorical wisdom’ (p. 63) that Cicero and More loved, but the wisdom born of philosophical inquiry, a wisdom that would have a place for rhetoric, but also serve as its controlling guide. Remer so insistently emphasises the rhetorical approach and its being anchored in the ‘core values’ of the community that it is not clear how it could rise from public opinion to elevate such opinion and direct the political community to better ways. Is the true orator but a flatterer of the community's norms? Cicero observes in the opening pages of his earliest writing on rhetoric, De inventione, that eloquence without wisdom is very dangerous and wisdom without eloquence cannot be effective. He was not speaking of ‘rhetorical wisdom’ whatever that is. What he says here seems to be essentially his view through all his subsequent rhetorical and philosophical writings.