 However difficult it might be for Torquatus himself, it seems open to an Epicurean to respond that they have no obligation to simply accept Roman values as authoritative. Epicurean theory is professedly a radical one that sees most humans as having been corrupted by false values. What, then, should we, as non-Roman readers, make of Cicero’s discussion? Even if we accepted that he demonstrates an incompatibility between Roman and Epicurean values, it is not clear that this should have any hold on us. We are surely both able and entitled to assess the Epicurean case on its own merits. On the other hand, we are no less the inheritors of cultural assumptions and outlooks than the Romans, even if ours are different, and even if the ‘we’ implied are a great and diverse plurality. Disentangling a thing’s ‘own merits’ from the values we bring to an encounter with it is neither a simple nor perhaps a viable task.