PROLEGOMENA.

one should not scorn it as a document of the rationale by which learned men were accustomed to philosophize in that age.

2. For Macrobius structured his commentaries in such a way that, after presenting Cicero’s words, he would extract whatever seemed to be able to be related to them from the tenets of the Platonists and the precepts of geometry, geography, and astronomy.

And first (Book I, ch. 1), he discusses the reasoning that exists between the books that Plato and Cicero composed concerning the Republic, why at the end of the work the latter Cicero imagines Scipio being carried into the sky to his father and grandfather in a dream, while the former Plato makes a dead man return to life, so that he may bring forth those things which he saw while dead. He then defends (ch. 2), in order to dispel the quibbles of the Epicureans, that it is permissible for philosophers to use fables, and (ch. 3) he states there are five kinds of dreams, and that Scipio’s dream can be referred to the first three kinds, which alone have power for divination; furthermore, that such a dream is appropriate for Scipio, and he inserts an interpretation of the Homeric fiction of the two gates of Sleep. Then (ch. 4), he attempts to reveal Cicero’s purpose, which he says is to show that the souls of those who have merited well for the Republic are returned to the sky after death and there enjoy perpetual blessedness, and he adds that Scipio appeared to him in his sleep to be in the Milky Way.

Now he proceeds to the very words of the Dream, and first indeed to that part which is about numbers, and the words (Somn. II, 2): For when your age has completed eight revolutions and returns of the sun, etc., he interprets in such a way that he brings forth the comments of the Platonists (ch. 5) on the number eight and (ch. 6) on the number seven, and not only on these, but also on those numbers from which these are composed, with attention given primarily to Plato’s Timaeus a dialogue by Plato concerning the nature of the physical world. On account of the words which are read there, if you shall have escaped, (ch. 7) he demonstrates that "it is a law of all signs or dreams that they either announce, threaten, or warn of adverse things obliquely." The words (Somn. III, 1): For all who have preserved, aided, or increased their country, a certain place is defined in the sky where they may enjoy life for eternal time, provoke (ch. 8) a discussion "on the blessedness which is owed to the preservers of the country" and on the four kinds of virtues, in which matter he uses Plotinus as his authority. On account of the words (ibid.): having departed from here, they return here, he teaches (ch. 9) that "the origin of souls flows from the sky," and on account of the words (Somn. III, 2): I asked, however, whether he himself were alive ... whom we thought to be extinct, and indeed this which you call life is death, (ch. 10) "the underworld of souls is nothing other than the bodies themselves," which matter (ch. 11) he pursues further according to the opinion of the Platonists who posit "there are two deaths, one of the soul, the other of the animal" and that "the moon is the boundary of life and death," and (ch. 12) he discourses on the reason "by which souls slip down from the sky into the hells of this life," which nevertheless "are not extinguished by their own death, but are overwhelmed for a time, and again restored from the body to the light of perennial life, they return to the whole." Then he reconciles (ch. 13) Cicero’s words (Somn. III, 5): Wherefore ... the soul must be held in the custody of the body, nor without the command of him, by whom it was given to you, must one depart from the life of men, with the opinion of Plato, who teaches that "philosophy itself is a meditation on dying," in such a way that he says "Plato knew two deaths of man, one of which nature provides, the other we ourselves provide, when the soul leaves the body released by the law of nature, and when the soul, still constituted in the body, contemns the allurements of the body while philosophy teaches, and puts off all passions: this is to be sought by the wise, but that other is to be awaited." Then he returns to the words of Cicero (Somn. III, 4): who watched that sphere, which you see in this temple in the middle, which is called Earth: and to them the soul was given from those eternal fires, which you call stars and constellations, and he demonstrates (ch. 14) by what reason the "world is called the temple of God."