Cicero's Tusculan Disputations
of glory and praise, which we shall discuss on another occasion.
V. As respects the private life and the manners of the citizens, they
are intimately connected with the laws that constitute just marriages
and legitimate offspring, under the protection of the guardian deities
around the domestic hearths. By these laws, all men should be
maintained in their rights of public and private property. It is only
under a good government like this that men can live happily--for
nothing can be more delightful than a well-constituted state.
On which account it appears to me a very strange thing what this * * *
VI. I therefore consume all my time in considering what is
the power of that man, whom, as you think, we have described
carefully enough in our books. Do you, then, admit our idea
of that governor of a commonwealth to whom we wish to refer
everything? For thus, I imagine, does Scipio speak in the
fifth book: "For as a fair voyage is the object of the master
of a ship, the health of his patient the aim of a physician,
and victory that of a general, so the happiness of his
fellow-citizens is the proper study of the ruler of a
commonwealth; that they may be stable in power, rich in
resources, widely known in reputation, and honorable through
their virtue. For a ruler ought to be one who can perfect
this, which is the best and most important employment among
mankind."
And works in your literature rightly praise that ruler of a
country who consults the welfare of his people more than
their inclinations.
VII. Tully, in those books which he wrote upon the
Commonwealth, could not conceal his opinions, when he speaks
of appointing a chief of the State, who, he says, must be
maintained by glory; and afterward he relates that his
ancestors did many admirable and noble actions from a desire
of glory.
Tully, in his treatise on the Commonwealth, wrote that the
chief of a state must be maintained by glory, and that a
commonwealth would last as long as honor was paid by every
one to the chief.
[_The next paragraph is unintelligible._]
Which virtue is called fortitude, which consists of
magnanimity, and a great contempt of death and pain.
VIII. As Marcellus was fierce, and eager to fight, Maximus
prudent and cautious.
Who discovered his violence and unbridled ferocity.
Which has often happened not only to individuals, but also to
most powerful nations.
In the whole world.
Because he inflicted the annoyances of his old age on your
families.
IX. Cicero, in his treatise on the Commonwealth, says, "As
Menelaus of Lacedaemon had a certain agreeable sweetness of
eloquence." And in another place he says, "Let him cultivate
brevity in speaking."
By the evidence of which arts, as Tully says, it is a shame
for the conscience of the judge to be misled. For he says,
"And as nothing in a commonwealth ought to be so uncorrupt as
a suffrage and a sentence, I do not see why the man who
perverts them by money is worthy of punishment, while he who
does so by eloquence is even praised. Indeed, I myself think
that he who corrupts the judge by his speech does more harm
than he who does so by money, because no one can corrupt a
sensible man by money, though he may by speaking."
And when Scipio had said this, Mummius praised him greatly,
for he was extravagantly imbued with a hatred of orators.
* * * * *
INTRODUCTION TO THE SIXTH BOOK.
In this last book of his Commonwealth, Cicero labors to show
that truly pious philanthropical and patriotic statesmen will
not only be rewarded on earth by the approval of conscience
and the applause of all good citizens, but that they may
expect hereafter immortal glory in new forms of being. To
illustrate this, he introduces the "Dream of Scipio," in
which he explains the resplendent doctrines of Plato
respecting the immortality of the soul with inimitable
dignity and elegance. This Somnium Scipionis, for which we
are indebted to the citation of Macrobius, is the most
beautiful thing of the kind ever written. It has been
intensely admired by all European scholars, and will be still
more so. There are two translations of it in our language;
one attached to Oliver's edition of Cicero's Thoughts, the
other by Mr. Danby, published in 1829. Of these we have
freely availed ourselves, and as freely we express our
acknowledgments.
BOOK VI.
SCIPIO'S DREAM.
I. Therefore you rely upon all the prudence of this rule,
which has derived its very name (_prudentia_) from foreseeing
(_a providendo_). Wherefore the citizen must so prepare
himself as to be always armed against those things which
trouble the constitution of a state. And that dissension of
the citizens, when one party separates from and attacks
another, is called sedition.
And in truth in civil dissensions, as the good are of more
importance than the many, I think that we should regard the
weight of the citizens, and not their number.
For the lusts, being severe mistresses of the thoughts,
command and compel many an unbridled action. And as they
cannot be satisfied or appeased by any means, they urge those
whom they have inflamed with their allurements to every kind
of atrocity.
II. Which indeed was so much the greater in him because
though the cause of the colleagues was identical, not only
was their unpopularity not equal, but the influence of
Gracchus was employed in mitigating the hatred borne to
Claudius.
Who encountered the number of the chiefs and nobles with
these words, and left behind him that mournful and dignified
expression of his gravity and influence.
That, as he writes, a thousand men might every day descend
into the forum with cloaks dyed in purple.
[_The next paragraph is unintelligible._]
For our ancestors wished marriages to be firmly established.
There is a speech extant of Laelius with which we are all
acquainted, expressing how pleasing to the immortal gods are
the * * * and * * * of the priests.
III. Cicero, writing about the Commonwealth, in imitation of
Plato, has related the story of the return of Er the
Pamphylian to life; who, as he says, had come to life again
after he had been placed on the funeral pile, and related
many secrets about the shades below; not speaking, like
Plato, in a fabulous imitation of truth, but using a certain
reasonable invention of an ingenious dream, cleverly
intimating that these things which were uttered about the
immortality of the soul, and about heaven, are not the
inventions of dreaming philosophers, nor the incredible
fables which the Epicureans ridicule, but the conjectures of
wise men. He insinuates that that Scipio who by the
subjugation of Carthage obtained Africanus as a surname for
his family, gave notice to Scipio the son of Paulus of the
treachery which threatened him from his relations, and the
course of fate, because by the necessity of numbers he was
confined in the period of a perfect life, and he says that he
in the fifty-sixth year of his age * * *
IV. Some of our religion who love Plato, on account of his
admirable kind of eloquence, and of some correct opinions
which he held, say that he had some opinions similar to my
own touching the resurrection of the dead, which subject
Tully touches on in his treatise on the Commonwealth, and
says that he was rather jesting than intending to say that
was true. For he asserts that a man returned to life, and
related some stories which harmonized with the discussions of
the Platonists.
V. In this point the imitation has especially preserved the
likeness of the work, because, as Plato, in the conclusion of
his volume, represents a certain person who had returned to
life, which he appeared to have quitted, as indicating what
is the condition of souls when stripped of the body, with the
addition of a certain not unnecessary description of the
spheres and stars, an appearance of circumstances indicating
things of the same kind is related by the Scipio of Cicero,
as having been brought before him in sleep.
VI. Tully is found to have preserved this arrangement with no
less judgment than genius. After, in every condition of the
Commonwealth, whether of leisure or business, he has given
the palm to justice, he has placed the sacred abodes of the
immortal souls, and the secrets of the heavenly regions, on
the very summit of his completed work, indicating whither
they must come, or rather return, who have managed the
republic with prudence, justice, fortitude, and moderation.
But that Platonic relater of secrets was a man of the name of
Er, a Pamphylian by nation, a soldier by profession, who,
after he appeared to have died from wounds received in
battle, and twelve days afterward was about to receive the
honors of the funeral pile with the others who were slain at
the same time, suddenly either recovering his life, or else
never having lost it, as if he were giving a public
testimony, related to all men all that he had done or seen in
the days that he had thus passed between life and death.
Although Cicero, as if himself conscious of the truth,
grieves that this story has been ridiculed by the ignorant,
still, avoiding giving an example of foolish reproach, he
preferred speaking of the relater as of one awakened from a
swoon rather than restored to life.
VII. And before we look at the words of the dream we must
explain what kind of persons they are by whom Cicero says
that even the account of Plato was ridiculed, who are not
apprehensive that the same thing may happen to them. Nor by
this expression does he wish the ignorant mob to be
understood, but a kind of men who are ignorant of the truth,
though pretending to be philosophers with a display of
learning, who, it was notorious, had read such things, and
were eager to find faults. We will say, therefore, who they
are whom he reports as having levelled light reproaches
against so great a philosopher, and who of them has even left
an accusation of him committed to writing, etc. The whole
faction of the Epicureans, always wandering at an equal
distance from truth, and thinking everything ridiculous which
they do not understand, has ridiculed the sacred volume, and
the most venerable mysteries of nature. But Colotes, who is
somewhat celebrated and remarkable for his loquacity among
the pupils of Epicurus, has even recorded in a book the
bitter reproaches which he aims at him. But since the other
arguments which he foolishly urges have no connection with
the dream of which we are now talking, we will pass them over
at present, and attend only to the calumny which will stick
both to Cicero and Plato, unless it is silenced. He says that
a fable ought not to have been invented by a philosopher,
since no kind of falsehood is suitable to professors of
truth. For why, says he, if you wish to give us a notion of