Book 6

[Nonius, 42M] You look, then, for the whole foresight of this director, which has gained this very name from "providing" beforehand.

[Gellius, Attic Nights, 7.16.11; Nonius, 290M] And this was the greater for this reason, that, when the colleagues were in an equal case, they were not only not equal in odium, but even the affection felt for Gracchus turned aside the odium felt against Claudius.

[Eulogius, on the Dream of Scipio, 401Or.] . . . who, having been set upon the pyre, came to life again and told many secrets of the world below . . . that these things which are said about the immortality of the soul and about heaven are not the inventions of dreaming philosophers, nor incredible fables such as the Epicureans deride, but the conjectures of prudent men.

[Augustine, City of God, 22.28] . . . that he wished rather to be understood as having played than to affirm that this is true.

[Macrobius, Saturnalia, 1.4.2sq.] But although to the wise the very consciousness of noble deeds is the amplest reward of virtue, yet that divine virtue desires no statues fixed in lead, no triumphs with withering laurels, but certain more lasting and greener kinds of rewards. "What, pray, are these?" said Laelius. Then Scipio: "Suffer me, since we have now kept holiday for the third day . . .

When I had come into Africa, as you know, a tribune of the soldiers to the consul Manius Manilius, attached to the fourth legion, nothing was more to my mind than that I should meet King Masinissa, for just causes most friendly to our family. When I came to him, the old man embraced me and wept, and a little after looked up to heaven and said: "I give thanks to thee, most high Sun, and to you, the rest of the Heavenly Ones, that before I depart from this life I behold, in my kingdom and beneath these roofs, Publius Cornelius Scipio, by whose very name I am revived; so never does the memory of that best and most unconquered man depart from my mind." Then I asked him about his kingdom, and he me about our commonwealth, and with many words bandied back and forth on either side that day was spent for us.

And afterward, received with royal magnificence, we drew out our discourse far into the night, while the old man spoke of nothing but Africanus, and remembered not only all his deeds but even his sayings. Then, when we had parted to go to bed, a sleep deeper than usual embraced me, both wearied with the journey and having stayed awake far into the night. Here—I believe it came from what we had been speaking of, for it generally happens that our thoughts and discourses bring forth in sleep something such as Ennius writes of Homer, of whom plainly he was wont, when awake, most often to think and speak—Africanus showed himself to me, in that form which was better known to me from his portrait than from himself; and when I knew him, I shuddered indeed; but he: "Be of good courage," he said, "and lay aside your fear, Scipio, and commit to memory what I shall say.

Do you see that city, which, compelled by me to obey the Roman people, renews its old wars and cannot be at rest?" (And he pointed out Carthage from a lofty place, full of stars, bright and shining.) "To assault which you now come, scarcely yet a soldier. This, within two years, you as consul shall overthrow, and that surname which until now you hold by inheritance from us shall be won by your own self. But when you have destroyed Carthage, celebrated a triumph, been censor, and gone as legate to Egypt, Syria, Asia, and Greece, you shall be chosen consul a second time in your absence, and shall finish a very great war: you shall raze Numantia. But when you have been borne in your chariot into the Capitol, you shall find the commonwealth thrown into confusion by the counsels of my grandson.

Here, Africanus, it will behove you to show your country the light of your mind, your genius, and your counsel. But I see the path of that time, as it were, twofold and uncertain by fate. For when your age has run through seven times eight returns and circuits of the sun, and these two numbers—each of which, for a different reason, is held complete—shall by their natural revolution have made up for you your fated sum, then upon you alone and upon your name the whole state shall turn itself; upon you the senate, upon you all good men, the allies, the Latins shall look; you shall be the one man on whom the safety of the state shall rest; and, not to say much, it will behove you, as dictator, to establish the commonwealth, if you escape the impious hands of your kinsmen." Here, when Laelius had cried out, and the rest groaned more vehemently, Scipio, smiling gently: "Hush, I pray," he said, "do not wake me from my sleep, and listen a little while to the rest.

But that you may be the more eager, Africanus, to guard the commonwealth, hold this for certain: for all who have preserved, aided, or enlarged their country there is a sure and appointed place in heaven, where the blessed enjoy an everlasting age. For to that supreme God who rules the whole universe, nothing—of what at least is done on earth—is more acceptable than those gatherings and assemblies of men joined together by law, which are called states; their rulers and preservers, having set out from this place, return hither."

Here I—though I was terrified, not so much by the fear of death as by the treachery of my own kin—yet asked whether he himself was alive, and my father Paulus, and the others whom we thought extinguished. "Nay rather," he said, "these are alive, who have flown out of the bonds of their bodies as out of a prison; but that life of yours, which is so called, is death. Do you not see your father Paulus coming to you?" When I saw him, I poured out a flood of tears; but he, embracing and kissing me, forbade me to weep.

And I, as soon as, my weeping checked, I could begin to speak: "I pray you, most holy and best of fathers, since this is life, as I hear Africanus say, why do I linger on earth? why do I not hasten to come hither to you?" "It is not so," said he. "For unless that God, whose temple is all this that you behold, has freed you from those guardianships of the body, the way hither cannot be open to you. For men were begotten under this law, that they should keep watch over that globe which you see in the midst of this temple, which is called the earth; and to them was given a soul out of those everlasting fires which you call constellations and stars, which, globed and round, animated by divine minds, complete their circles and orbits with wondrous swiftness. Wherefore by you too, Publius, and by all the dutiful, the soul must be kept in the keeping of the body, nor must you depart from human life save by the command of him by whom it was given you, lest you seem to have shirked the human office assigned by God.

But, Scipio, as this your grandfather did, as I who begot you did, cherish justice and piety—which, though it is great toward parents and kin, is greatest toward the country. That life is the way to heaven and to this gathering of those who have already lived and, loosed from the body, dwell in that place which you behold" (and that was a circle, gleaming with most splendid brightness among the flames), "which you, taking the name from the Greeks, call the Milky Way." And as I gazed, all the other things seemed to me splendid and wonderful. And there were stars which we have never seen from this place, and magnitudes of all of them such as we have never suspected to be; of which the least was that which, farthest from heaven and nearest the earth, shone with a borrowed light. And the globes of the stars easily surpassed the magnitude of the earth. Now the earth itself seemed to me so small that I was ashamed of our empire, by which we touch, as it were, but a point of it.

And as I gazed upon it more intently, "How long," said Africanus, "will your mind be fixed upon the ground? Do you not see into what temples you have come? All things are joined together for you by nine circles, or rather globes, of which one is the heavenly, the outermost, which embraces all the rest—the supreme God himself, fencing in and holding the others; in which are fixed those everlasting courses of the stars that revolve; beneath which are set seven, which turn backward with a motion contrary to the heaven. Of these, one globe is held by that star which on earth they call Saturn's. Then there is that radiance, prosperous and salutary to the race of men, which is called Jupiter's; then the ruddy one, dreadful to the lands, which you call Mars'; then, beneath, almost in the middle region, the Sun holds his place, leader and chief and ruler of the other lights, the mind and the tempering of the universe, of so great magnitude that he lights up and fills all things with his radiance. Him, as companions, follow the course of Venus, the other of Mercury; and in the lowest orbit the Moon, kindled by the rays of the Sun, revolves. Below this there is now nothing but what is mortal and frail, save the souls given by the gift of the gods to the race of men; above the Moon all things are eternal. For that which is the middle and the ninth, the earth, neither moves and is the lowest, and into it all weights are borne by their own inclination."

When I gazed upon these things astonished, when I recovered myself: "What," said I, "is this sound, so great and so sweet, that fills my ears?" "This," he said, "is that sound which, parted by unequal intervals, yet distinguished in due proportion by reason, is made by the impulse and motion of the orbs themselves; and, tempering high notes with low, it makes various concords evenly; for so great motions cannot be driven on in silence, and nature brings it about that the extremes, on the one side, sound deep, and, on the other, high. For which cause that highest, star-bearing course of the heaven, whose revolution is swifter, is moved with a high and quickened sound, while this lunar and lowest moves with the deepest; for the earth, the ninth, remaining unmoved, ever clings fixed in the one seat, embracing the middle place of the universe. But those eight courses, in which there is the same force in two of them, make seven sounds distinguished by intervals—a number which is well-nigh the knot of all things; which learned men, imitating with strings and songs, have opened for themselves a return to this place, as have others who, with surpassing genius, in human life have cultivated divine studies.

The ears of men, filled with this sound, have grown deaf; nor is there any duller sense in you—just as, where the Nile rushes down from the highest mountains at those places which are called Catadupa, the people that dwells near that place lacks the sense of hearing on account of the greatness of the sound. But so great is this sound of the whole universe in its most rapid revolution, that the ears of men cannot take it in—just as you cannot look straight at the Sun, and your sight and sense are overcome by his rays." Wondering at these things, I yet turned my eyes again and again to the earth.

Then Africanus: "I perceive," he said, "that you are even now contemplating the seat and home of men; which, if it seems to you small, as it is, then look ever upon these heavenly things and despise those human ones. For what celebrity of men's talk, or what glory worth seeking, can you attain? You see that the earth is inhabited in scanty and narrow places, and that even in those very spots, as it were, where men dwell, vast solitudes are set between; and that those who inhabit the earth are not only so cut off that nothing can flow among them from one to another, but stand partly aslant from you, partly athwart, partly even opposite; from whom you surely can look for no glory.

You see, moreover, the same earth girded and surrounded, as it were, by certain belts; of which you see that the two most diverse from each other, propped at either end upon the very poles of heaven, are frozen stiff with frost, while that middle and greatest is scorched by the heat of the Sun. Two are habitable, of which that southern one—in which those who dwell press their footprints opposite to yours—has nothing to do with your race; and this other, lying beneath the north wind, which you inhabit, see by how thin a part it touches you. For all the earth which is cultivated by you, narrowed at the poles, broader at the sides, is a certain small island surrounded by that sea which on earth you call the Atlantic, the Great Sea, the Ocean—which yet, for so great a name, you see how small it is.

From these very cultivated and known lands, has your name, or the name of any of us, been able either to climb over this Caucasus which you see, or to swim across that Ganges? Who in the remaining parts of the rising or setting sun, or in the regions of the north or south, shall hear your name? With these cut away, you surely see in what narrow bounds your glory wishes to spread itself. And those very men who speak of us—how long will they speak?

Nay, even if that offspring of men to come should desire to hand on to posterity the praises of each one of us, received from their fathers, yet, on account of the floods and burnings of the lands, which must of necessity befall at a fixed time, we can attain glory not only not eternal, but not even lasting. And what does it matter that there will be talk of you among those who shall be born hereafter, when there was none among those who were born before you?—

who were neither fewer and surely better men, especially since, among those very men by whom our name can be heard, no one can attain the memory even of a single year. For men in the common way measure the year only by the return of the Sun, that is, of a single star; but when all the stars shall have returned to the same point whence they first set out, and shall have brought back at long intervals the same arrangement of the whole heaven, then that may truly be called the revolving year; in which I scarcely dare to say how many ages of men are contained. For as once the Sun seemed to men to fail and to be quenched, when the soul of Romulus passed into these very temples, so, whenever from the same quarter and at the same time the Sun shall again fail, then, when all the signs and stars have been recalled to the beginning, hold the year complete; of which year know that not yet a twentieth part has been turned.

Wherefore, if you despair of a return to this place, in which all things lie open to great and excellent men, of what worth, after all, is that glory of men, which can scarcely pertain to one small part of a single year? Therefore, if you would look on high and contemplate this seat and eternal home, neither give yourself to the talk of the crowd, nor set the hope of your affairs in human rewards; virtue herself, by her own allurements, ought to draw you to true honour. What others say of you, let them see to it themselves; but say it they will. Yet all that talk is hemmed within the narrow bounds of those regions which you see, nor was it ever lasting concerning any man, but is buried with the death of men and extinguished in the forgetfulness of posterity."

When he had said this: "But I indeed, Africanus," said I, "if there lies open, as it were, a path to the entrance of heaven for those who have deserved well of their country, though from boyhood, treading in my father's footsteps and in yours, I have not failed your honour, yet now, with so great a reward set before me, I will strive far more vigilantly." And he: "Strive indeed, and hold this for certain: that not you are mortal, but this body of yours; for you are not what that shape declares you to be; but each man's mind is the man himself, not that figure which can be pointed at with a finger. Know, then, that you are a god, if indeed a god is that which lives, which feels, which remembers, which foresees, which so rules and governs and moves the body over which it is set, as does that supreme God this universe; and as the eternal God himself moves the universe, in some part mortal, so does the everlasting soul move the frail body.

For that which is ever moved is eternal; but that which brings motion to something else, and is itself driven from elsewhere, must of necessity, when it has an end of motion, have an end of living. Therefore that alone which moves itself, because it is never forsaken by itself, never even ceases to be moved; nay rather, to the other things that are moved, this is the source, this the first beginning of moving. But of a first beginning there is no origin; for from a first beginning all things arise, but it itself can be born of no other thing; for that would not be a first beginning which were begotten elsewhere. And if it never arises, neither does it ever perish. For a first beginning, once extinguished, will neither be reborn of another nor create another of itself, since it is necessary that all things arise from a first beginning. So it comes about that the beginning of motion is from that which is moved of itself; and that can neither be born nor die; or else the whole heaven and all nature must fall to pieces and stand still, nor find any force by which, struck at the first, it may be set in motion.

Since, then, it is manifest that that is eternal which is moved of itself, who is there that would deny that this nature has been bestowed upon souls? For everything is without soul that is driven by an outward impulse; but that which is a living thing is stirred by an inward and its own motion; for this is the proper nature and force of the soul. And if this alone, of all things, moves itself, then surely it was not born, and is eternal.

This, then, exercise upon the best things! And the best cares are those for the safety of the country; the soul stirred and exercised by these will fly the more swiftly to this seat and home of its own; and it will do so the more quickly, if, even then, while it is shut up in the body, it reaches out beyond, and, contemplating those things which are without, withdraws itself as much as possible from the body. For the souls of those who have given themselves to the pleasures of the body and made themselves, as it were, the servants of those pleasures, and at the impulse of lusts obedient to pleasures have violated the laws of gods and men—their souls, when they have slipped from their bodies, hover about the earth itself, and do not return to this place save when they have been harried through many ages." He departed; and I was loosed from sleep.