Commentary on the Dream of Scipio and the Saturnalia

[OF SCIPIO]

...to be in heaven, and a fixed place where the blessed may enjoy eternal life. For there is nothing to that supreme God, who rules all this world, which is more acceptable among the things done on earth than those councils and gatherings of men joined by law, which are called states original: "civitates". In this context, it refers to organized political communities or city-states.. The rulers and preservers of these come from here, and to here they shall return.

At this point, although I was terrified—not so much by the fear of death as by the fear of treachery from my own kin original: "insidiarum à meis". Scipio was famously found dead in his bed under suspicious circumstances, a fate this passage foreshadows.—I asked nonetheless whether he himself lived, and my father Paulus Lucius Aemilius Paullus Macedonicus, the biological father of Scipio Aemilianus., and others whom we think of as dead. "On the contrary," he said, "these are truly alive who have flown out from the chains of the body as if from a prison. Your so-called life is actually death. Why do you not look at your father Paulus coming toward you?"

When I saw him, I indeed shed a flood of tears. But he, embracing and kissing me, forbade me to weep. And as soon as I had suppressed my weeping and was able to speak, I said, "I beg you, most holy and excellent father, since this is truly life, as I hear Africanus say, why do I linger on earth? Why do I not hasten to come here to you?"

"It is not so," he said: "for unless that God, whose temple is all this which you behold, has freed you from those confinements of the body original: "corporis custodijs", literally the 'guards' or 'custody' of the flesh., the way here cannot be open to you. For men are born under this law: to care for that globe which you see in the middle of this temple, which is called Earth. And a soul has been given to them from those eternal fires which you call constellations and stars, which, being spherical and round, and animated by divine minds Ancient cosmology viewed the stars as living, rational beings or "divine minds.", complete their circles and orbits with marvelous speed. Therefore, both you, Publius, and all pious men, must keep the soul in the custody of the body; nor must you depart from human life without the command of Him by whom the soul was given to you, lest you seem to have abandoned the human duty assigned by God. But like this, Scipio, as your grandfather here, and as I who fathered you, cherish justice and piety; which, while it is great toward parents and...