 The social and political backdrop is important in another way too. One of Cicero’s purposes in writing philosophy is to bring the best of the Greek philosophical inheritance to wider Roman attention. That does not, however, mean that his works are simple philosophical manuals to be absorbed uncritically by their readership. A striking feature of Cicero’s philosophical output is that it takes seriously and critically the question of the relation between abstract ideas, on the one hand, and the culture and tradition of particular societies (most saliently, for him, Rome), on the other.