Dream of Scipio

Dream of Scipio

The Dream of Scipio (Latin, "Somnium Scipionis"), written by Cicero, describes a fictional dream vision of the Roman general Scipio Aemilianus, set two years before he commanded at the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC.

Upon his arrival in Africa, Scipio Aemilianus is visited by his dead grandfather (by adoption), Scipio Africanus, hero of the Second Punic War. He finds himself looking down upon Carthage "from a high place full of stars, shining and splendid". His future is foretold by his grandfather, and great stress is placed upon the loyal duty of the Roman soldier, who will as a reward after death "inhabit...that circle that shines forth among the stars which you have learned from the Greeks to call the Milky Way". Nevertheless, Scipio Aemilianus sees that Rome is an insignificant part of the earth, which is itself dwarfed by the stars. The planetary spheres are enumerated with references to Pythagorean thought and the idea of the "Music of the Spheres". Then the climatic belts of the earth are observed, from the snow fields to the deserts, and there is discussion of the nature of the Divine, the soul and virtue, from the Stoic point of view.

The "Dream of Scipio" appears in the sixth book of Cicero's partly lost "De re publica", ("On the Republic"), a treatise on the history, laws, and polity of the Roman republic.

Relation to other Works

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The tale is modelled on "The Myth of Er" in Plato's Republic. [Patrick V. Reid, "Readings in Western Religious Thought: The Ancient World," Paulist Press 1987, page 175] Although the story of Er records a near-death experience, while the journey of Scipio's "disembodied soul" takes place in a dream, both give examples of belief in astral projection. [Julian Palley, "Bécquer's "Disembodied Soul", University of Pennsylvania Press 1979] .

Macrobius' "Commentary" upon Scipio's Dream was known to the sixth-century philosopher Boethius, and was later valued throughout the Middle Ages as a primer of cosmology. The work assumed the astrological cosmos formulated by Claudius Ptolemy. Chretien de Troyes referred to Macrobius' work in his first Arthurian romance, "Erec", and it was a model for Dante's account of heaven and hell. Chaucer referred to the work in The Nun's Priest's Tale and especially in the Parlement of Foules.

The composer Mozart, at the age of fifteen, wrote a short opera entitled "Il sogno di Scipione" (K. 126) based upon Scipio Aemilianus's inter-planetary journey through the cosmos.

References

External links

* [http://www.ipa.net/~magreyn/somnium.htm The "Somnium Scipionis"] (in Latin)
* [http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/bl/bl_text_cic_scipiodream.htm "The Dream of Scipio"] (in English)


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