One hundred years and a revolution separate Cicero's De officiis from Seneca's De clementia. That both texts share a political, moral and rhetorical language to some extent indicates a degree of conceptual continuity in Roman political discourse across the Caesarian divide which is illustrative of a relatively unexceptional fact about the history of ideologies: every political experience, however novel, is rendered intelligible to some degree by the use of pre-existing vocabularies. Both texts articulate political theories in distinctively Roman rhetorical mode; both are primarily concerned with laying down moral precepts as the key to successful political conduct; and neither is particularly exercised by questions of constitutional definition or reform (Seneca in particular is explicitly dismissive of the importance of this line of enquiry). Furthermore, both authors identify the cultivation and practice of virtus as crucial to the welfare of the Roman res publica; both give accounts of the Roman body politic which delineate the relations between this quality and the concepts of gloria, honor and fama in their prescriptions of its proper exercise; and both are preoccupied with the extent and the effect of the domination represented by the person of Caesar on the politics of their day. But the political distance which has been travelled between the two texts is most obviously revealed in the diametrically opposed positions towards the figure of Caesar and the idea of monarchy which each of them take up.