De Republica

The Republic

M. Tullius Cicero

The Dream

Ch. 13

“Yet that you may be, Africanus, more eager to protect the republic, reflect thus: to everyone who has preserved, helped, and increased the fatherland, it is certain that a place is assigned in heaven where the blessed enjoy everlasting life.  For nothing is made more agreeable on earth to that chief god who rules the whole world, than the meetings and gatherings of men united by law, which are called states.  The rulers and preservers of these states from this place, departed hence, return here.”

Ch. 14

Here I, although I was terrified not so much by the fear of death, as by fear of treachery by my own fellows, I still sought whether the man lived, my father Paullus, and the others whom we believed dead.  “Aye,” he said, “they live here who have flown from the chains of the body as from a prison, truly that which is called your life is death.  Why do you not see Paullus your father coming to you?”  When I saw him, I for my part squandered a quantity of tears, while he for his part, embracing and kissing me, forbade me to weep.

Ch. 15

I, when I first began to be able to speak, after I restrained my tears, said, “Most sacred and best father, I ask since this is life as I hear Africanus say, why do I delay on earth?  Why do I not hurry to come here to you?”  “It is not thus,” he said, “for unless god himself, whose is this whole temple which you see, should free you from the cares of your body, the approach hither cannot lie open to you.  For men have been begotten by this law, that they might keep that globe which you see stands as center in this temple, which is called the earth, and to these the soul has been given from those eternal fires which you call constellations and stars, which globular and rotund, animated by the divine mind, make their orbits and circles in extraordinary speed.  Wherefore the soul  is to be held fast in the custody of the body by both you, Publius and every pious man, and not save commanded by him from whom that that soul has been given you, ought it be removed from the life of men, lest you seem to have fled the human duty assigned by god.

Ch. 16

Yet thus, Scipio, since your grandfather is here, as am I who bore you, cultivate justice and piety, which is not only great towards parents and relatives, but also greatest towards the fatherland.  This life is a way into heaven and into this gathering of those who have already lived and resided in that place with a reduced body which you see”—while there was that circle shining with a most splendid whiteness among the flames—“which you call, as you learned from the Greeks, the Milky Way.”  From which place all other famous and extraordinary men seemed revealed to me.  However, there were those stars which we have never seen from this place and a magnitude to everything which we never supposed to exist, out of which the least thing was that which is farthest from heaven, it was lit by the nearest foreign light from the lands, the spheres of stars, however, easily conquered the size of the earth.  Already that planet seemed small to me, so that I felt ashamed of our empire in which we held about a dot of that.