De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream eBook

Scipio’s Dream, which, is nearly all that remains of the Sixth Book of the De Republica, had survived during the interval for which the rest of the treatise was lost to the world.  Macrobius, a grammarian of the fifth century, made it the text of a commentary of little present interest or value, but much prized and read in the Middle Ages.  The Dream, independently of the commentary, has in more recent times passed through unnumbered editions, sometimes by itself, sometimes with Cicero’s ethical writings, sometimes with the other fragments of the De Republica.

In the closing Dialogue of the De Republica the younger Africanus says:  “Although to the wise the consciousness of noble deeds is a most ample reward of virtue, yet this divine virtue craves, not indeed statues that need lead to hold them to their pedestals, nor yet triumphs graced by withering laurels, but rewards of firmer structure and more enduring green.”  “What are these?” says Laelius.  Scipio replies by telling his dream.  The time of the vision was near the beginning of the Third Punic War, when Scipio, no longer in his early youth, was just entering upon the career in which he gained pre-eminent fame, thenceforward to know neither shadow nor decline.

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I have used for Scipio’s Dream, Creuzer and Moser’s edition of the De Republica.

CICERO DE AMICITIA

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1 Quintus Mucius, the Augur, used to repeat from memory, and in the most pleasant way, many of the sayings of his father-in-law Caius Laelius, never hesitating to apply to him in all that he said his surname of The Wise.  When I first put on the robe of manhood [Footnote:  In the earliest time a boy put on the toga virilis when he had completed his sixteenth year, in Cicero’s time pupilage ceased a year earlier and by Justinin’s code the period at which it legally ceased was the commencement of the fifteenth year.  The Scaevola to whom Cicero was thus taken was Quintus Mucius (Scaevola) the Augur, already named.] my father took me to Scaevola and so commended me to his kind offices, that thenceforward, so far as was possible and fitting I kept my place at the old man’s side. [Footnote:  It was customary for youth in training for honorable positions in the State to attach themselves especially to men of established character and reputation, to attend them to public places, and to remain near them whenever anything w"as to be learned from their conversation, their legal opinions, their public harangues, or their pleas before the courts.  Distinguished citizens deemed themselves honored by a retinue of such attendants.  Cicero, in the De Officiis, says that a young man may best commend himself to the early esteem and confidence of the community by such an intimacy.] I thus laid up in my memory many of his elaborate discussions