 This is surely intended by Cicero to seem disquieting. If arguments need a cloak of rhetorical eloquence to save them from refutation, then the ideas in support of which those arguments are advanced might, on reflection, appear less, not more, convincing. Balbus then gives a brief list of some of Zeno’s succinct deductive arguments in favour of the universe being intelligent, wise, happy and eternal, and therefore divine (2.21). So even as Balbus tells us that a more flowing presentation has a better chance of evading the ‘calumnies’ of the Academic critics (2.20), we as readers are offered the chance by Cicero to exercise our critical judgement on some concrete arguments, while reflecting, in equally critical vein, on the issue of how philosophy can be communicated without either the alienation of excessive technicality or the distortion of an overly smooth rhetoric.