The Republic is a dialogue on Roman politics by Cicero, written in six books between 54 and 51 BC. It is written in the format of a Socratic dialogue in which Scipio Aemilianus (who had died a few decades before Cicero was born, several centuries after Socrates' death) takes the role of a wise old man — a typical feature of the genre. Cicero's treatise was politically controversial: by choosing the format of a philosophical dialogue he avoided naming his political adversaries directly. By employing various speakers to raise differing opinions, Cicero not only remained true to his favored skeptical method of setting opposing arguments against one another, but also made it more difficult for his adversaries to take him to task on what he had written.