Somnium Scipionis

By Marcus Tullius Cicero

Book Overview

The Dream of Scipio (Latin, Somnium Scipionis), written by Cicero, is the sixth book of De re publica, and describes a fictional dream vision of the Roman general Scipio Aemilianus, set two years... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0582367514
• ISBN13: 9780582367517
• Release Date: January 1988
• Publisher: Addison Wesley Publishing Company
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 7.1" x 10.0"
• Age Range: 14 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 9

Customer Reviews

A Lonely Torch of Knowledge

"The Dream of Scipio" is perhaps THE most important link in the NeoPythagorean tradition that survived the book-burnings of the early Church and the Barbarian hordes. Cicero studiously investigated the earlier Pythagoreans, while his books on "Laws" and "The Republic" were modelled on Plato's own books of similar titles. The "Dream of Scipio," at the end of Cicero's "De Republica," is in fact a re-working of the "Vision of Er" in Plato's 'Republic" (with varied elements, of course). The Commentary of Macrobius, on the "Dream of Scipio," luckily ensured its survival through the dismal Dark Ages, when 90 percent of Plato's works simply ceased to exist in medieval Europe.