Cicero, writing about the Commonwealth, in imitation of Plato, has related the story of the return of Er the Pamphylian to life; who, as he says, had come to life again after he had been placed on the funeral pile, and related many secrets about the shades below; not speaking, like Plato, in a fabulous imitation of truth, but using a certain reasonable invention of an ingenious dream, cleverly intimating that these things which were uttered about the immortality of the soul, and about heaven, are not the inventions of dreaming philosophers, nor the incredible fables which the Epicureans ridicule, but the conjectures of wise men.

He insinuates that that Scipio who by the subjugation of Carthage obtained Africanus as a surname for his family, gave notice to Scipio the son of Paulus of the treachery which threatened him from his relations, and the course of fate, because by the necessity of numbers he was confined in the period of a perfect life, and he says that he in the fifty-sixth year of his age * * * IV.

Some of our religion who love Plato, on account of his admirable kind of eloquence, and of some correct opinions which he held, say that he had some opinions similar to my own touching the resurrection of the dead, which subject Tully touches on in his treatise on the Commonwealth, and says that he was rather jesting than intending to say that was true.

For he asserts that a man returned to life, and related some stories which harmonized with the discussions of the Platonists.
V.In this point the imitation has especially preserved the likeness of the work, because, as Plato, in the conclusion of his volume, represents a certain person who had returned to life, which he appeared to have quitted, as indicating what is the condition of souls when stripped of the body, with the addition of a certain not unnecessary description of the spheres and stars, an appearance of circumstances indicating things of the same kind is related by the Scipio of Cicero, as having been brought before him in sleep.
VI.

Tully is found to have preserved this arrangement with no less judgment than genius.