 Interestingly, it appears that Torquatus’ own father was an Epicurean, whom Torquatus evidently admired. He reports with enthusiasm his father’s rebuttal of a Stoic argument against hedonism (1.39); and, though this is not said explicitly, perhaps was influenced by his father in adopting Epicureanism himself. Cicero thus slyly reinforces the sense that ancestral piety is an ineliminable part of the value system that Torquatus shares. He has induced Torquatus to agree that it would be a problem for the validity of Epicurean ethics if it did not sit comfortably with the norms of Roman culture. The reader is thus encouraged to reflect on whether, and if so how, the abstract and general features of an ethical theory are to fit with outlooks and practices which, at least in part, carry normative weight precisely because they represent adherence to a particular tradition: a strategy that Cicero further deploys in his more lengthy critique of Epicurean ethics in Book 2 (see Inwood 1990).