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