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On Encountering Cephalus in De Senectute

This article considers a characteristic type of intertextual engagement in Cicero’s dialogues—the use of translated excerpts from Greek authors. Focusing first on Cicero’s own discussion of his methods in the preface to De Finibus, it argues that these quotations should in general be understood within a cultural framework, as part of a strategy of Roman self-assertion. Attention then turns to De Senectute, and to the long excerpt from Plato’s Republic that it contains. The presence of this passage, which associates Cato with Cephalus, is interpreted as Cicero’s means of establishing, in contradistinction to Plato, the importance of experiential knowledge.