 There are a number of good studies of Cicero’s life (e.g. Fuhrmann 1992, Rawson 1994, Tempest 2011); some background knowledge is salient to an understanding of his philosophical outlook. As already mentioned, Cicero lived through a turbulent historical period. Under the strains of empire, the Roman republican system of government had fractured, and was eventually to prove unsustainable. Cicero was both witness to and participant in some of the events that hastened the collapse of republican government and that ushered in, within fifteen years or so of his death, the rule of Augustus, first of the Roman emperors.