Dream of Scipio and Stoic Paradoxes

the Great Ocean, which you call the ocean on earth, which, however, you see is small despite its great name. From these cultivated and known lands, could your name, or the name of any of us, cross this Caucasus which you see, or cross the Ganges? Who in the remaining parts of the rising or setting sun, or the northern or southern parts, will hear your name? With these removed, you see perfectly well in what narrow limits your glory desires to spread itself. Furthermore, those who speak of you, how long will they speak? Even if future generations were to desire to hand down the praises of each of us, received from their fathers, to their descendants, yet because of the deluges and conflagrations of the earth which must happen at certain times, we can attain not only no eternal glory but not even a lasting one. And what does it matter that those who are born later will speak of you, when there were none among those who were born before you, who were neither fewer and certainly better men, especially since among those very people from whom our name can be heard, no one can preserve the memory of a single year? For men measure the year only by the return of the sun, that is, the return of one star. When all the stars have returned to the same place from which they once started, and have brought back the same configuration of the whole sky after long intervals, that can be called the turning year. In this, I dare say, how many human ages are contained! For just as in the time of Romulus the sun seemed to fail and be extinguished, when his soul penetrated these same temples, at that time the sun failed at the same point and at the same time, so that when all signs and stars have been recalled to the same beginning, you may consider the year completed. Of this year, know that now only a twentieth part has passed. Therefore, if you despair of a return to this place in which there is everything for great and excellent men, what is that human glory worth, which can barely extend to a small part of a single year? Therefore, if you wish to look upward and contemplate this seat and eternal home, do not concern yourself with the talk of men