 Cicero’s second, and most intense, period of philosophical production occurs during the last few years of his life, a period that saw the dictatorship and then assassination of Julius Caesar. The latter event caused Cicero’s political stock to rise briefly but, in the end, brought only futile hope of the restoration of republican government. The political situation, combined with personal tragedy – the death of his daughter Tullia in childbirth – resulted in a remarkable bout of creativity during which Cicero produced substantial works on a wide range of philosophical themes. His ambition, as he puts it in his preface to On the Nature of the Gods (1.7), was to compose nothing less than a comprehensive treatment covering ‘the whole of philosophy’ – a veritable encyclopedia of the subject.