Two of the most informative political tracts one can ever expect to read share very similar names. I mention this simply because in these degreed, but uneducated days, if one happens to refer to Cicero’s “Republic,” one can reliably count on being “corrected” by someone insisting that it was not Cicero, but Plato who wrote it. But for all their similar appellations, there are distinct differences between “De re publica” and “Res publica” that are less the result of the distinction between practical Roman thought and philosophical Greek philosophy and more the difference between the experience of an accomplished politician and the utopianism of an academic without responsibility.