Commentary on the Dream of Scipio and the Saturnalia

ON THE DREAM OF SCIPIO

...ample reward of virtue, yet those divine rewards do not consist in statues fixed in lead nor in triumphs with withering laurels, but in a more stable and lasting kind of fruit. Concerning the Republic, know this: For all who have preserved, assisted, or enlarged their fatherland, there is a certain and defined place in heaven where they may enjoy eternal life in happiness. And a little later, designating what this certain place is, he says: "But Scipio, just like this grandfather of yours, or like I who fathered you, cultivate justice and piety; while this is great toward parents and relatives, it is greatest toward the fatherland. That life is the path to heaven, and to this gathering of those who have already lived, and who, released from the body, inhabit the place you see": referring to the galaxy. original: significans galaxian For it must be known that the place in which Scipio seems to be while at rest is the milky circle, which is called the Galaxy original: Γαλαξίας. Indeed, he uses these words at the beginning: 'He showed me Carthage from a high place, full of stars, illustrious and bright.' And a little later he says more clearly: 'It was a circle shining out with a most splendid whiteness among the flames, which you (as you received from the Greeks) call the milky orb: from which, as I contemplated everything, they seemed to me brilliant and wonderful.' And concerning this galaxy, when we speak of circles, we shall discuss more fully.

CHAPTER V.

But now, since we have expressed what difference and what similarity exists between the books which Cicero wrote about the Republic and those which Plato wrote previously; and why either Plato adopted the testimony of Er The "Myth of Er" is the concluding story of Plato's Republic, involving a soldier who returns from the dead to describe the afterlife. or Cicero adopted the dream of Scipio for his work; and what the Epicureans Followers of Epicurus, who generally rejected the idea of the soul's immortality and mythical journeys to the afterlife. objected to Plato; or how the weak slander is refuted; and by which treatises the philosophers...