Commentary on the Dream of Scipio and the Saturnalia

...[ficti]tious The text here completes the thought that the use of a dream or myth might seem like a "fictitious" or unnecessary addition to a serious work. and perhaps it might seem so to others: lest we suspect that men excelling in wisdom, accustomed to sensing nothing but the divine in the search for truth, added something superfluous to such a refined work. A few things must therefore be said about this first, so that the intention of the work we are discussing may become clearly known. Plato, gazing deeply into the essence of all things and actions, observed in his entire discourse concerning the establishment of a Republic that the love of justice must be poured into the soul; without which not only a Republic, nor even a small gathering of men, but not even a small household will stand firm.

Furthermore, to *instill *An old reading has "to implant" original: "inoculandum"; a metaphor drawn from the practice of grafting plants. this affection for justice in hearts, he saw that nothing would be as supportive as if the fruits of that justice did not seem to end with the life of a man. But how could it be shown that this fruit survives and lasts after a man, unless the immortality of the soul were first established? Once faith in the eternity of souls was established, he noticed that it followed that certain places must be assigned to them once they are released from the bond of the body, according to the consideration of their good or wicked merit.

Thus in the Phaedo Plato’s dialogue on the soul's final hours and its immortality., after the soul is asserted into the true dignity of its own immortality by the light of unassailable reasons, there follows a distinction of the places which are owed to those leaving this life, by that law which each person established for himself while living. So too in the Gorgias A dialogue concerning rhetoric and the power of justice., after the discussion on behalf of justice is completed, we are reminded of the condition of souls after the body with the moral gravity and the persuasive charm of Socrates.

He [Plato] therefore followed the same method attentively, especially in those volumes in which he undertook to form the state of a Republic. For after he gave the primacy to justice and taught that the soul does not perish after the living being, he finally asserted at the end of the work—through that myth original: "fabulam" (for so some call it)—where the soul goes after the body, or from where it comes to the body; so that the soul might know either the reward for justice cultivated or the punishment for it scorned, since souls are indeed immortal and destined to undergo judg[ment]...