Cicero, On the Commonwealth (54 B.C.E.)
During his illustrious public career in Rome, Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.E.) was a lawyer, statesman, author, and orator. In each role, he displayed a keen intelligence, fierce patriotism, and high moral standards. This excerpt is from the last chapter of his treatise On the Commonwealth (54–51 B.C.E.), written at a time when Rome was rife with political and social conflicts. In this excerpt, Cicero uses an imaginary conversation between two military heroes from the Punic Wars—Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus (236–183 B.C.E.) and his adopted grandson, Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus Africanus the Younger (185–129 B.C.E.)—to highlight the moral values and sense of destiny that he considered to be at the heart of the republic’s greatness. Set in 149 B.C.E., the story begins with Scipio Africanus speaking to Publius Scipio the Younger in a dream.
From Cicero, On the Commonwealth and On the Laws, ed. James E. G. Zetzel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 95–102.
When I recognized him, I shuddered; but he said, “Stay calm and don’t be afraid, Scipio, and remember what I tell you.”
“Do you see that city, which I forced to obey the Roman people but which now renews its earlier wars and is incapable of remaining peaceful?” (He was pointing at Carthage from a spot high up and filled with stars, that was bright and glorious.) “You are coming to besiege it now as little more than a simple soldier, but within two years you will destroy it as consul, and you will receive on your own account the name which you have already inherited from me. But after you have destroyed Carthage, have celebrated a triumph, and have been censor, and after you have as an ambassador visited Egypt, Syria, Asia, and Greece, you will be elected consul for the second time in your absence and you will bring to a conclusion a major war by destroying Numantia. But after you ride up the Capitol in your triumphal chariot, you will encounter the commonwealth in a state of disorder because of the plans of my grandson.1 At this point, Africanus, you will have to display to your country the brilliance of your mind and talent and judgment. But I see at this point a double path of fate: when your span of years has traversed seven times eight turns and returns of the sun, . . . the whole state will turn to you alone and to your name: the senate, all upstanding citizens, the allies, and the Latins will look at you; you will be the one person on whom the safety of the state rests. To be brief: you will have to restore the commonwealth as dictator.2 . . .
“But so that you may be all the more eager, Africanus, to protect the commonwealth, know this: for all those who have saved, aided, or increased the fatherland there is a specific place set aside in the sky where they may enjoy eternity in blessedness. There is nothing that can happen on earth that is more pleasing to that leading god who rules the whole world than those councils and assemblages of men associated through law which are called states; the guides and preservers of these have set out from here, and here they return.”
At this point, even though I was terrified not so much by the fear of death as of treachery on the part of my own people, I still asked him whether he was alive, along with my father Paullus and the others whom we think of as dead. “Yes indeed,” he said, “these people are alive; they have escaped from the chains of the body as if from a prison, and what is called life among you is in fact death. Don’t you see your father Paullus approaching you?” And when I saw him, I wept heavily, but he embraced me and kissed me and told me not to weep.
As soon as I could quell my tears and began to be able to speak, I said: “I ask you, best and most sacred of fathers, since this is life, as Africanus tells me, why am I delaying on earth? Why don’t I hurry to come here to you?”
“That isn’t the way things are,” he said. “Unless the god, whose precinct is all that you behold, frees you from the guardianship of your body, you have no access to this place.3 Men are created under these terms, that they are to look after that globe which you see in the middle of this precinct, which is called earth; and they are given a soul from those eternal fires which you call constellations and stars, which are spherical globes endowed with divine minds and accomplish their rotations and revolutions with amazing speed. And so, Publius, both you and all pious people must keep your soul in the guardianship of the body, and you must not depart from human life without the order of him who gave you your soul: you must not seem to run away from the human duty assigned by the god. But, Scipio, you should be like your grandfather here and like me your father in cultivating justice and piety; it is important in relation to your parents and family, but most important in relation to your fatherland. That way of life is the way to the heavens and to this gathering of those who have ceased to live and after having been released from the body now inhabit the place you see” (it was a bright circle shining among the stars with a most radiant whiteness), “which you have learned from the Greeks to name the Milky Way.” And from that point, as I studied everything, it all seemed to me glorious and marvelous. There were stars which we never see from this place, and their size was such as we have never suspected; the smallest one was the one furthest from the heavens and closest to earth and shone with borrowed light.4 The globes of the stars easily surpassed the size of the earth, and earth itself now seemed so small to me that I was ashamed of our empire, which touches only a little speck of it. . . .
. . . Then Africanus said: “I realize that you are still looking at the home and dwelling of men; but if it seems to you as small as in fact it is, you must always look at these heavenly bodies and scorn what is human. What fame can you achieve in what men say, or what glory can you achieve that is worth seeking? You see that humans inhabit small and scattered portions of the earth, and that huge emptiness separates the blotches of human habitation. The people who inhabit the earth are not only so broken up that nothing can pass from one group of them to another, but some of them live across from you, others below you, and some directly opposite you on the earth; and it is clear that you can expect no glory among them. . . .
“Thus, even if you lose hope of returning to this place, where all things exist for great and outstanding men, still—what is that human glory really worth which can last scarcely a fraction of a single year? Therefore look on high if you wish; contemplate this dwelling and eternal home; and do not give yourself to the words of the mob, and do not place your hopes in human rewards: virtue itself by its own allurements should draw you towards true honor. Let others worry about what they say about you—and they will say things in any case. But everything they say is bounded by the narrow limits of the area, as you see, and it is never eternal about anyone, and it is overwhelmed by the deaths of men and extinguished by the forgetfulness of future generations.”
After he had said this, I replied: “For my part, Africanus, if in fact there is a kind of path to the heavens for those who have deserved well of their fatherland, even if through following your footsteps and those of my father from my childhood I have not fallen short of your glory, still now, when I see such a prize set before me, I will struggle all the more vigorously.”
And he answered me: “Keep at it; and know this: it is not you that is mortal but your body. You are not what your physical shape reveals, but each person is his mind, not the body that a finger can point at. Know then that you are a god, as surely as a god is someone who is alert, who feels, who remembers, who looks ahead, who rules and guides and moves the body of which he is in command just as that leading god does for the universe. And just as the eternal god moves the universe, which is partly mortal, so too does the eternal soul move the fragile body . . . Use your soul in the best activities! And the best concerns are those that involve the safety of the fatherland; the soul which is aroused and exercised by them will fly more swiftly to this, its dwelling and home. It will do so all the more swiftly if even when it is enclosed in the body it projects outward and by contemplating those things that are outside it draws itself as much as possible from the body. The souls of men who have surrendered themselves to the pleasures of the body and have made themselves into the servants of those pleasures, and at the urging of desires that are directed by pleasure have broken the laws of gods and men—those souls, when they have departed from the body, circle around the earth and only after having been harried for many generations do they return to this place.”
He departed, and I awoke.
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