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Philosophy for Cicero implies not only a way of life taught orally in a school but also reading and writing. This foreshadows his influence on the later Latin tradition, which identified philosophy with the meaning and evaluation of texts, and ultimately replaced its conception as an autonomous way of life. I propose four factors in Cicero's influence: initiating the tradition of Latin philosophical prose; developing its vocabulary; the choice of a rhetorical over a dialectical mode; and locating discussion in the context of libraries, reading and book production., By writing philosophical texts in Latin that achieved such a wide circulation, Cicero had a decisive influence on the growth in the western Roman world of a conception of philosophy [...]

Several prominent scholars assume that Aristotle regards the heavenly spheres as self-moving or rationally ensouled. Against this I argue first, Ph. 8.5 gives no support, and passages in Ph. 8 imply that all self-movers are terrestrial animals; second, passages in De motu animalium and De caelo where the heaven is called alive do not imply a quasi-animal soul; third, the exclusion of incidental self-movement from the heavens in Ph. 8.6 cannot be explained by locating movers in or on the spheres; fourth, the passage in Ph. 8.10 concerning the prime mover's location must be understood with that in De caelo 1.9 placing the changeless beings beyond the cosmos; fifth, Metaph. 12.7 and 9 exclude a heavenly intellect separate from the prime mover; and sixth, the heaven's desire, responsible for its movement, consists in physical excitation of its aitherial body, analogous to animal desire in MA 10. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]