Abstract
In De Republica, Cicero presents Scipio as the ideal moderator rei publicae, a statesman who is capable of teaching legislators. Scipio instructs the young men of his circle in the art of preserving good laws and changing bad laws for the better. His first task, however, and the crucial stage in the young men's education, is to recover the philosophic treatment of politics. In Cicero's time, philosophy had abandoned its concern with the city, preferring instead to study non-human nature. In De Republica, Scipio attempts to correct this understanding of philosophy, and thus make it once again useful to the city. In attempting thus to call philosophy back to earth, Cicero has been misunderstood by later scholarship. This article reassesses Cicero's political thought.
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