Commentary on the Dream of Scipio and the Saturnalia

...duty original: "officium". The text here completes the word from the previous page, finishing the thought that the performance of duty must be preserved. should be preserved. Cicero original: "Tullius", referring to Marcus Tullius Cicero., preserving this order with no less judgment than the genius with which it was discovered, followed this same arrangement. After he gave the palm of victory to Justice by debating it through every leisure and business of the Republic, he placed the sacred dwellings of immortal souls and the secrets of the celestial regions at the very summit of his completed work. He indicated where those who have managed the Republic with prudence, justice, fortitude, and moderation must arrive, or rather, return. But that Platonic teller of secrets was a certain man named Er, a Pamphylian by nation and a soldier by trade. When he seemed to have poured out his life from wounds received in battle, and finally on the twelfth day—while among the others killed together he was about to be honored with the final fire The funeral pyre.—suddenly, whether his soul was recovered or retained, he announced to the human race everything he had done or seen in the days passed between both lives, as if professing a public testimony. Although Cicero grieves that this fable was mocked by the unlearned as if he himself were conscious of the truth Meaning Cicero defends the underlying truth of the story despite its fantastical nature., yet avoiding the example of such dull-witted criticism, he preferred that his narrator be awakened rather than brought back to life Cicero uses a dream-vision (Scipio) rather than a resurrection (Er) to make the philosophical lesson more palatable to skeptics..

What response must be given to Colotes the Epicurean An Epicurean philosopher known for his attacks on Plato’s use of myths., who thinks
that a philosopher should not use fables; and what kind of fables
philosophy accepts, and when philosophers are accustomed to
use them.

CHAPTER II.

And before we consult the words of the dream, we must untie the knot of what kind of men Cicero mentions as having either mocked Plato’s fable, or why he does not fear that the same thing might happen to him. For by these words he does not wish the unskilled common people to be understood, but rather a class of men ignorant of the truth under a show of expertise; for it was certain that they had both read such things and were minded to criticize them. We shall say, therefore, whom he refers to as having exercised a certain levity of judgment against such a great philosopher; and which of them even left behind a written accu-