 The writings of Cicero were virtually canonized subsequent to his death as classic models of rhetoric and philosophy; as Richard Tuck (1990: 43) has remarked, “For fifteen hundred years, from the fourth century to the nineteenth, schoolchildren in Europe were exposed daily to two books. One was the Bible, and the other was the works of Cicero.” His many speeches and letters are themselves of considerable political and often philosophical interest, reworking the evaluative vocabulary of Roman law and politics in ways which suited his overarching (and changing) political purposes (for a critical assessment, see Gildenhard 2011, which concludes that “In his rhetoric Cicero...consistently refused to recognize the positions of his adversaries as genuine political positions and challenged their identities as senatorial peers, Roman citizens, or even human beings ”(Gildenhard 2011: 390). While his philosophical writings—composed for the most part as a student of philosophy in Rome and Athens, and then in a brief period (46–44 BCE) when political developments led him to retreat from active public life — cover a wide range of topics, including for example, among those especially relevant to politics are two works on the political role of the orator and the nature of oratory or rhetoric, celebrating the moral purposes of the orator as essential to the success of republican government.