De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream

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Marcus Cicero. De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream

INTRODUCTION

SCIPIO'S DREAM

CICERO DE AMICITIA

SCIPIO'S DREAM

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PALIMPSESTS [Footnote: Rubbed again,—the parchment, or papyrus, having been first polished for use, and then rubbed as clean as possible, to be used a second time.]—the name and the thing—are at least as old as Cicero. In one of his letters he banters his friend Trebatius for writing to him on a palimpsest,[Footnote: In palimpsesto.] and marvels what there could have been on the parchment which he wanted to erase. This was a device probably resorted to in that age only in the way in which rigid economists of our day sometimes utilize envelopes and handbills. But in the dark ages, when classical literature was under a cloud and a ban, and when the scanty demand for writing materials made the supply both scanty and precarious, such manuscripts of profane authors as fell into the hands of ecclesiastical copyists were not unusually employed for transcribing the works of the Christian Fathers or the lives of saints. In such cases the erasion was so clumsily performed as often to leave distinct traces of the previous letters. The possibility of recovering lost writings from these palimpsests was first suggested by Montfaucon in the seventeenth century; but the earliest successful experiment of the kind was made by Bruns, a German scholar, in the latter part of the eighteenth, century. The most distinguished laborer in this field has been Angelo Mai, who commenced his work in 1814 on manuscripts in the Ambrosian Library at Milan, of which he was then custodian. Transferred to the Vatican Library at Rome, he discovered there, in 1821, a considerable portion of Cicero's De Republica, which had been obliterated, and replaced by Saint Augustine's Commentary on the Psalms. This latter being removed by appropriate chemical applications, large portions of the original writing remained legible, and were promptly given to the public.

This treatise Cicero evidently considered, and not without reason, as his master-work. It was written in the prime of his mental vigor, in the fifty-fourth year of his age, after ample experience in the affairs of State, and while he still hoped, more than he feared for the future of Rome. His object was to discuss in detail the principles and forms of civil government, to define the grounds of preference for a republic like that of Rome in its best days, and to describe the duties and responsibilities of a good citizen, whether in public office or in private life. He regarded this treatise, in its ethics, as his own directory in the government of his province of Cilicia, and as binding him, by the law of self-consistency, to unswerving uprightness and faithfulness, He refers to these six books on the Republic as so many hostages [Footnote: Praedibus.] for his uncorrupt integrity and untarnished honor, and makes them his apology to Atticus for declining to urge an extortionate demand on the city of Salamis.

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

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 was 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 of important subjects, as well as many of his utterances that had both brevity and point, and my endeavor was to grow more learned by his wisdom. After his death I stood in a similar relation to the high-priest Scaevola, [Footnote: As Cicero says, the most eloquent of jurists, and the most learned jurist among the eloquent. He was at the same time pre-eminent for moral purity and integrity. It was he, who, as Cicero (De Officiis, iii. 15) relates, insisted on paying for an estate that he bought a much larger sum than was asked for it, because its price had been fixed far below its actual value.] whom I venture to call the foremost man of our city both in ability and in uprightness. But of him I will speak elsewhere. I return to the Augur. While I recall many similar occasions, I remember in particular that at a certain time when I and a few of his more intimate associates were sitting with him in the semicircular apartment [Footnote: Latin, hemicyclio, perhaps, a semicircular seat.] in his house where he was wont to receive his friends, the conversation turned on a subject about which almost every one was then talking, and which you, Atticus, certainly recollect, as you were much in the society of Publius Sulpicius; namely, the intense hatred with which Sulpicius, when Tribune of the people, opposed Quintus Pompeius, then Consul, [Footnote: The quarrel arose from the zelous espousal of the Marian faction by Sulpicius, who resorted to arms, in order to effect the incorporation of the new citizens from without the city among the previously existing tribes. Hence a series of tumults and conflicts, in one of which a son of Pompeius lost his life.] with whom he had lived in the closest and most loving union,—a subject of general surprise and regret. Having incidentally mentioned this affair, Scaevola proceeded to give us the substance of a conversation on friendship, which Laelius had with him and his other son-in-law, Caius Fannius, the son of Marcus, a few days after the death of Africanus. I committed to memory the sentiments expressed in that discussion, and I bring them out in the book which I now send you. I have put them into the form of a dialogue, to avoid the too frequent repetition of "said I" and "says he," and that the discussion may seem as if it were held in the hearing of those who read it. While you, indeed, have often urged me to write something about friendship, the subject seems to me one of universal interest, and at the same time specially appropriate to our intimacy. I have therefore been very ready to seek the profit of many by complying with your request. But as in the Cato Major, the work on Old Age inscribed to you, I introduced the old man Cato as leading the discussion, because there seemed to be no other person better fitted to talk about old age than one who had been an aged man so long, and in his age had been so exceptionally vigorous, so, as we had heard from our fathers of the peculiarly memorable intimacy of Caius Laelius and Publius Scipio, it appeared appropriate to put into the mouth of Laelius what Scaevola remembered as having been said by him when friendship was the subject in on the authority of men of an earlier generation, and illustrious in their time, seems somehow to be of specially commanding influence on the reader's mind. Thus, as I read my own book on Old Age, I am sometimes so affected that I feel as if not I, but Cato, were talking. But as I then wrote as an old man to an old man about old age, so in this book I write as the most loving of friends to a friend about friendship. [Footnote: In the Latin we have here two remarkable series of assonances, rhythmical to the ear, and though translatable in sense not so in euphony. "Ut tum senex ad senem de senectute, sic hoc libro ad amicum amicissimus, de amicitia scripsi."] Then Cato was the chief speaker, than whom there was in his time scarcely any one older, and no one his superior in intellect, now Laelius shall hold the first place, both as a wise man (for so he was regarded), and as excelling in all that can do honor to friendship. I want you for the while to turn your mind away from me, and to imagine that it is Laelius who is speaking. Caius Fannius and Quintus Mucius come to their father-in-law after the death of Africanus. They commence the conversation, Laelius answers them. In reading all that he says about friendship, you will recognize the picture of your own friendship for me.

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