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De Amicitia (On Friendship) and Scipio's Dream
De Amicitia and Scipio's Dream - On Friendship Author:Marcus Tullius Cicero Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SCIPIO'S DEEAM. 1. When I arrived in Africa, to serve, as you know, in the office of military Tribune of the fourth Legion, under Manius1 Manilius as consul, ... more »I desired nothing so much as to meet Masinissa2 the king, who for sufficient reasons3 stood in the most friendly relation to our family. When I came to him, the old man embraced me with tears, and shortly afterward looked up to heaven and said: " I thank thee, sovereign Sun,4 and all of you lesserlights of heaven, that before I pass away from this life I behold in my kingdom and beneath this roof Publius Cornelius Scipio, whose very name renews my strength, so utterly inseparable from my thought is the memory of that best and most invincible of men who first bore it." Then I questioned him about his kingdom, and he asked me about our republic; and with the many things that we had to communicate to each other, the day wore away. 1 The praenomen Marcus is given to Manilius in the manuscript of the De Kepublica discovered by Angelo Mai; but Manius is the reading in all previous authorities as to this special fragment 3 King of Numidia, — a country nearly identical in extent with the present province of Algeria. Its name defines its people, being derived from vopuiScs, nomads. Its inhabitants were a wild, semi-savage cluster of tribes, black and white. Masinissa, though faithful to the Romans after he had convinced himself that theirs must be the ascendant star, was a crafty, treacherous, cruel prince, probably with enough of civilization to have acquired some of its vices, while he had not lost those of the savage. 8 The elder Africanus had confirmed him in the possession of his own Numidia, and had added to it the adjoining kingdom.of Cirta. The Numidians worshipped the heavenly bodies. At a later hour, after...« less