 This is not of course to say that our perspectives cannot be changed by such philosophical encounters. Ethical theory, particularly of the professedly radical sort that many ancient philosophers propounded, would hardly have a point if that were the case; and Cicero’s project of communicating such theories would be equally unintelligible in that light. But coming to a theory from outside of any perspective is unintelligible. What Cicero’s holding up of Epicurean ethics against the canvas of Roman tradition conveys is a point about how ethical theory in particular must conform, not so much to specific values and traditions, as to certain basic elements of what makes us human, without which it would be hard to discern how an ethical theory could have purchase on us at all: above all, perhaps, our status as social creatures shaped by our relation to specific histories and traditions.