Somnium Scipiōnis

Somnium Scipiōnis (‘dream of Scipio’), surviving portion of the otherwise lost sixth book of Cicero's De republica, preserved in the commentary of Macrobius. It takes the form of a narrative placed in the mouth of Scipio Aemilianus. He relates a visit to the court of Masinissa (see SOPHONISBA), a Numidian ally of Rome during the Second Punic War (218–201 BC), during which there was much talk of the first great Scipio, the hero of that war, who was given the cognomen Africanus. When the younger Scipio retired to bed, the ghost of the elder appeared to him in a dream, foretold his future, and exhorted him to virtue, patriotism, and disregard of human fame; for those who have served their country well there will be the reward of a heavenly habitation in the afterlife (see also POSIDONIUS for the Stoic origin of this idea). The narrative incidentally indicates Cicero's concept of the universe, borrowed from Greek philosophers. The ‘Dream’ is largely modelled on the myth of Er in the tenth book of Plato's Republic. A poetical summary of it occurs in Geoffrey Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls (perhaps 1382).