Cicero’s anonymous interlocutor in his Tusculan disputations is often regarded as a colourless, clumsy thinker. In this article, he is rather appreciated as a clever young man who is on a level with Cicero himself in looking for the truth. It is argued that his critical attitude and sober-mindedness remain basically the same throughout the work. An appendix lists passages where we can find questions or interventions that may be attributed with a varying degree of plausibility to the interlocutor.