De Amicitia, Scipios Dream | Page 5

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.
The work is in the form of Dialogues, in which, with several
interlocutors beside, the younger Africanus and Laelius are the chief
speakers; and it is characterized by the same traits of dramatic genius to
which I have referred in connection with the De Amicitia.
The De Republica was probably under interdict during the reigns of the
Augustan dynasty; men did not dare to copy it, or to have it known that
they possessed it; and when it might have safely reappeared, the
republic had faded even from regretful memory, and there was no
desire to perpetuate a work devoted to its service and honor. Thus the
world had lost the very one of all Cicero's writings for which he most
craved immortality. The portions of it which Mai has brought to light
fully confirm Cicero's own estimate of its value, and feed the earnest--it
is to be feared the vain--desire for the recovery of the entire work.
Scipio's Dream, which, is nearly all that remains of the Sixth Book of
the De Republica, had survived during the interval for which the rest of
the treatise was lost to the world. Macrobius, a grammarian of the fifth
century, made it the text of a commentary of little present interest or

value, but much prized and read in the Middle Ages. The Dream,
independently of the commentary, has in more recent times passed
through unnumbered editions, sometimes by itself, sometimes with
Cicero's ethical writings, sometimes with the other fragments of the
_De Republica_.
In the closing Dialogue of the De Republica the younger Africanus says:
"Although to the wise the consciousness of noble deeds is a most ample
reward of virtue, yet this divine virtue craves, not indeed statues that
need lead to hold them to their pedestals, nor yet triumphs graced by
withering laurels, but rewards of firmer structure and more enduring
green." "What are these?" says Laelius. Scipio replies by telling his
dream. The time of the vision was near the beginning of the Third
Punic War, when Scipio, no longer in his early youth, was just entering
upon the career in which he gained pre-eminent fame, thenceforward to
know neither shadow nor decline.
* * * * *
I have used for Scipio's Dream, Creuzer and Moser's edition of the _De
Republica_.
CICERO DE AMICITIA
* * * * *
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,