In conclusion, Altman has written an innovative book that uses close readings of Cicero and careful attention to his reading of Plato to challenge a number of orthodoxies and to push to see new elements of Cicero's thought. . . This book will be valuable not solely to scholars of Cicero but anyone interested in intellectual history, as Cicero is ... Read moreone of the missing steps between Plato, Aristotle, Hellenistic Philosophy and Modernity.
POLIS: The Journal for Ancient Greek Political Thought
This is a book fizzing with energy, and full of learning of many sorts, from which any discriminating reader stands to gain.
The Classical Review
Altman's essays, as he explores Cicero's hidden and open Platonism, are as engaging and stimulating as one might imagine. Few if any contemporaries have read as widely and deeply in Cicero's writings. With objectivity but no pretended scholarly detachment, he brings his immense erudition to his personal engagement of Cicero. He finds himself in awe at Cicero's integrity and achievement as a thinker, writer and political leader. We and our modern republics, he rightly concludes, are much in need of a properly understood Cicero.
Walter Nicgorski, University of Notre Dame Show Less