It is a propitious moment, then, for Raphael Woolf to present an overall assessment of Cicero's philosophy in what is pretty much the first monograph on the topic ever to be published. Woolf has no time for reading Cicero's philosophical works as mere sources for Hellenistic philosophy, making it clear from the beginning that he considers them "worthy of study for their own sake" (2) and is taking their author seriously as a philosopher in his own right, "a thoughtful and sophisticated writer, whose works can and should be read as coherent bodies of philosophical reflection" (2). Significantly, Woolf embraces the Romanness of Ciceronian thought, acknowledging that it is "a product of interaction with its cultural and political background" (4) and that generally, as he nicely puts it, "philosophy does have a geography" (5). In Woolf's view, the key to Cicero's philosophy is his (Academic) Skepticism, which manifests itself not only in the dialogue format of most of his writings, but also in a fundamentally questioning attitude toward philosophy, "a suspicion of grand solutions and unqualified precepts" (7). These three central aspects of Woolf's portrait of Cicero philosophus—serious philosophy, Romanitas, and Skepticism—are neatly encapsulated in the book's subtitle.