Concerning desire they said the following. This experience is complex in its variety and has the most forms. Some desires are acquired and provided from without, but others are born with us. Desire itself is a certain motion of the soul towards [something], an impulse and longing for filling or for presence of sensation, or for emptying and for absence and not to perceive.

The entire fragment is preserved in sections 230–3 of Iamblichus’ On the Pythagorean Way of Life, but about the first half of the fragment is also preserved earlier in the VP by Iamblichus in sections 101–2. In neither case does Iamblichus indicate the source of the information that he quotes, which is typical of his procedure in most of his writings.

Concerning luck they said the following: A part of it is divine, for some inspiration arises from the divine for some people, either for the better or for the worse, and it is clearly in accordance with precisely this that some are lucky and some are unlucky. This is most clearly seen when those who do something with no prior consideration and without plan are often successful, while those who do something after planning in advance and taking correct precautions fail.

As we have seen, most recent scholars (e.g., Burkert, Kahn, Zhmud) depend on Rivaud and Wehrli for what can be called the standard view of the Precepts. These earlier scholars state the view in a very uncompromising fashion. Rivaud proposes that “Aristoxenus with the help of texts from the Republic has reconstructed a Pythagorean politics that no Pythagorean author had ever expressly formulated” (1932: 784) and later adds, “if Aristoxenus presents Pythagorean doctrine it is necessary to recognize that Plato’s originality is mediocre” (1932: 787).

The Precepts have a distinctive style and format that is largely determined by their nature as described above. In identifying the notable features of their style, it is important to start just from the evidence provided by the extracts explicitly identified as from the Precepts by Stobaeus. These stylistic features can then be used to help identify passages in Iamblichus’ On the Pythagorean Way of Life that derive from the Precepts even though Iamblichus does not explicitly identify their source.

In Book 2 of Cicero’s On the nature of the gods, Balbus argues for a Stoic theology and view of religion, and in Book 3 Cotta, an Academic skeptic, argues against him. I argue that both characters are supporters of traditional Roman pagan religion. In contrast to the Epicurean Velleius in Book 1, Balbus argues that the gods do care for us, in fact that the cosmic god fates every detail of our lives. He describes a world whose beauty is a principle reason to think that this rational creator has planned it for us, and further argues that this creator is good. He offers a complex rereading of Roman religion and poetic myth, according to which Roman religious practices were begun in ways that Stoic theology can support, and that it can still support once later distortions of this theology have been cleared away. Cotta, a pontifex, says that his skepticism is consistent with his priestly office, on grounds reminiscent of modern fideism. But he argues that Balbus’ dogmatic Stoic theology would destabilize the beliefs of those practising Roman religion, because Balbus cannot rigorously relate the many Roman gods to the one Stoic cosmic god.

In Book 1 of On divination, Cicero’s brother Quintus, who is not a Stoic, presents the Stoic case that all the many forms of divination at Rome are channels of divine communication. He does so explicitly in response to the arguments of On the nature of the gods, to strengthen the case that the gods care for us. I argue that his speech, which scholars have often called confused, can be better understood once we see it as a continuation of On the nature of the gods. For he speaks about not the, or even one, Stoic defence of divination, but rather two different Stoic views. The first is the view of Chrysippus, according to which divination was an art of interpreting messages from the gods. This view was challenged by the skeptic Carneades, and Cotta reissued some of this challenge in On the nature of the gods. Quintus recruits a new view in answer to this challenge, according to which some divination (e.g. augury, haruspicy, astrology) is artificial in that its divination meaning is first discovered by an art, but some is natural, in that some dreams and oracles have divinatory meaning without the use of an art.

Cicero says that almost no philosophers held atheism or agnosticism. For him the Central Question of philosophy of religion is not the existence of the gods, but whether the gods care for us by providence. He says we must answer this question to moderate religion. I argue that although traditional Roman pagan religion required orthopraxy, and not orthodoxy, Cicero thinks that the actions of a pagan practitioner could be "moderated" by what she believed about her religious behavior: if she believes that the gods care for us more than they do, that is superstition, but if she believes that they care for us less than they do, that is impiety. Yet Romans, Cicero says, were bewildered by their ancestral religion. He offers Hellenistic philosophy as a new route to responsible beliefs about it. Philosophy might help a Roman form true beliefs on the Central Question, or (like Cicero) to refrain from risky beliefs either way. On the nature of the gods and On divination are carefully designed to present this debate, among Stoics, with rich theories that the gods care and give us divinatory information, Epicureans, with rich theories to the contrary, and Academics, who withhold judgment.

Nineteenth and early twentieth century scholars thought Cicero a bad source for Hellenistic philosophy. They thought that the speeches in his dialogues were translated, often badly, from single sources. Thus they read him only to reconstruct his sources by Quellenforschung. I first give a sympathetic account of these scholars’ projects, which is often dismissed too easily today. Second, I give a complete argument that these scholars were wrong, and that today’s more positive, but often incompletely defended, view of Cicero is correct. Third, I argue that Cicero wrote dialogues not only to introduce Hellenistic philosophy to a Latin audience, but also as literary unities to impress a learned Roman audience who already knew philosophy in Greek. His models for the dialogue form were Plato, Aristotle, and Heraclides of Pontus, but he adapted it to to serve his radical Academic skepticism, in which he followed Carneades and Clitomachus. He hoped to be the model for a Latin tradition of good writing about philosophy, that would "illuminate" both philosophy and Latin. Cicero’s creativity as a philosophical author shows why Quellenforschung failed, and that he is a good source for Hellenistic thought.

Being a radical Academic skeptic, Cicero as author does not endorse an answer to the questions of On the nature of the gods and On divination. But when he portrays himself as a character in the dialogues, he portrays himself as finding plausible on those occasions a consistent philosophicaltheology and view of religion. I suggest that this is meant to model the free reaction of a skeptical mind to debates on questions where the skeptic forms no beliefs. The view that Cicero portrays as plausible to "himself" is the Stoic theology that the natural world is divine and benevolent, except that he finds implausible the Stoic view that divination delivers information from the gods (although he says that divinatory practices at Rome should continue for other reasons). Taking this attitude would be one way to "moderate" Roman religion, that is, to avoid impiety and superstition in practising it, but the reader is left free to make up his or her own mind.