Scholarship on Roman political thought and its legacy, especially anglophone, has rapidly expanded over the last decade. The main drivers of this renewed attention to Roman political ideas and institutions are an historical interest in the collapse of the Roman republic; a philosophical interest in republicanism; and a growing sensitivity to the originality of Roman thinkers, especially Cicero, in contrast to the older view that they were simply derivative of the Greeks. In this essay I will discuss recent publications on Cicero and Roman political ideas. After offering an overview of key themes in this new scholarship, I seek to suggest promising directions for future research and encourage the growing interest in Roman political thought and Cicero in particular. Cicero provides a fascinating link between ideas, institutions and action on the ground and he is therefore with good reason at the centre of much of the rapidly expanding literature on Roman political thought. In addition, given his interest in developing a theory of justice as the foundation of the state (res publica), a focus on Cicero will help explore the legacy of republicanism from the angle of his ideas about justice while paying attention to scholarship placing these ideas into their historical and institutional context.

This article examines Seneca's theory of monarchy in De clementia. It focuses in particular on Seneca's appropriation and redefinition of some key terms within Roman political thought in order to present his theory as an account of the restitution of liberty to the res publica under the government of the virtuous princeps. By relocating the Roman body politic to a Stoic moral universe, Seneca is able to draw upon parts of his philosophical inheritance in order to substantiate his claim in some depth.