 His philosophical compositions bear out this approach in two important and connected ways. Firstly, they are by and large written in dialogue form (see Gorman 2005, Schofield 2008). His adoption of the form in part reflects his admiration for Plato, whom he considered the greatest of all philosophers. Now Cicero’s relation to Plato is a complex one (see Long 1995b, Hösle 2008, Bishop 2019 ch. 2), and his use of the dialogue form differed from Plato’s, manifesting itself principally in opposed set speeches rather than rapid back-and-forth exchanges, though the latter are not completely absent from Cicero’s work (and long speeches are common enough in Plato). We find Cicero also invoking the (now lost) dialogues of Aristotle and of the early Platonist philosopher Heraclides of Pontus as influences on him. Still, his favouring of dialogue over straight treatise shares the Platonic motive of engaging readers in active philosophical enquiry.