CICERO 106-43 B.C.E.

 

 

Dream of Scipio

 

‘That is the life which leads to heaven, and to the company of those who, having completed their lives in the world, are now released from their bodies and dwell in that region you see over there, which the Greeks have taught you people on earth to call the ‘Milky Way’’. And he pointed to a circle of light, blazing brilliantly among all the other fires. [1]

 

As I gazed out from where I stood, first in one direction and then another, the whole prospect looked marvellously beautiful. There were stars we never see from the earth, and they were larger than we could possibly have imagined. The smallest was the luminary which is farthest away from heaven and nearest to the earth, and shines with reflected light. These starry spheres were much larger than the earth. Indeed the earth now seemed to me so small that I began to think less of this empire of ours, which only amounts to a pinpoint on its surface.

While I looked more and more intently down at the earth Africanus checked me. ‘How long,’ he asked, ‘do you propose to keep your eyes fastened down there upon that world of yours'? Look up, instead, and look round at the sacred region into which you have now entered. The universe is held together by nine concentric spheres. The outermost sphere is heaven itself, and it includes and embraces all the rest. For it is the Supreme God in person, enclosing and comprehending everything that exists, that is to say all the stars which are fixed in the sky yet rotate upon their eternal courses. Within this outermost sphere are eight others. Seven of them contain the planets - a single one in each sphere, all moving in the contrary direction to the great movement of heaven itself. The next sphere to the outermost is occupied by the orb which people on earth name after Saturn. Below Saturn shines the brilliant light of Jupiter, which is benign and healthful to mankind. Then comes the star we call Mars, red and terrible to men upon earth.

 

Next, almost midway between heaven and earth, blazes the Sun. He is the prince, lord and ruler of all the other worlds, the mind and guiding principle of the entire universe, so gigantic in size that everything, everywhere, is pervaded and drenched by his light. In attendance upon the Sun are Venus and Mercury, each in its own orbit; and the lowest sphere of all contains the Moon, which takes its light, as it revolves, from the rays of the sun. Above the Moon there is nothing which is not eternal, but beneath that level everything is moral and transient (except only for the souls in human beings, which are a gift to mankind from the gods). For there below the Moon is the earth, the ninth and lowest of the spheres, lying at the centre of the universe. The earth remains fixed and without motion; all things are drawn to it, because the natural force of gravity pulls them down. I surveyed the scene in a stupor. But finally I recovered enough to ask: ‘What is this sound, so strong and so sweet, which fills my ears?’

‘That,’ he replied, ‘is the music of the spheres. They create it by their own motion as they rush upon their way. The intervals between them, although differing in length, are all measured according to a fixed scheme of proportions; and this arrangement produces a melodious blend of high and low notes, from which emerges a varied harmony. For it cannot be that these vast movements should take place in silence, and nature has ordained that the spheres utter music, those at the summit giving forth high sounds, whereas the sounds of those beneath are low and deep. That is to say, the spheres containing the uppermost stars, comprising those regions of the sky where the movements are speediest, give out a high and piercing sound, whereas the Moon, which lies beneath all the others, sends forth the lowest note. ‘The ninth of the spheres, the earth, fixed at the centre of the universe, is motionless and silent. But the other eight spheres produce seven different sounds on the scale - not eight, since two of these orbs move at identical speeds, but seven, a number which is the key to almost all things that exist. Clever men, by imitating these musical effects with their stringed instruments and voices, have given themselves the possibility of eventually returning to this place; and the same chance exists for others too, who during their earthly lives haves devoted their outstanding talents to heavenly activities.’

 

‘The ears of mankind are filled with this music all the time. But they have become completely deaf to its melody; no other human faculty has become so atrophied as this. The same thing happens where the Nile rushes down from high mountains to the place known as Catadupa. For the sound there is so loud that the people who live nearby have entirely lost their sense of hearing. And that, too, is why the mighty music of the spheres, created by the immeasurably fast rotations of the whole universe, cannot be apprehended by the human ears - any more than you can look at the light of the Sun, which is so intense it blots out your power of vision altogether.’

 

The scene filled me with awe and delight. And yet all the time I still could not help riveting my eyes upon our own world there below. Africanus noticed this, and spoke again. ‘I see,’ he said, ‘that your gaze is still fastened, even now, upon the places where mortals dwell upon the earth. But can you not understand that the earth is totally insignificant? Contemplate these heavenly regions instead! Scorn what is mortal!’

 

‘For the lips of mankind can give you no fame or glory worth the seeking. Note how few and minute are the inhabited portions of the earth, and look upon the vast deserts that divide each one of these patches from the next. See, the inhabitants of the world are so cut off from one another that their different centres cannot even communicate with each other. The place where you yourself dwell, for example, is far removed from certain of the other populated areas, both in latitude and longitude; and some people live in regions that are at the very opposite end of the world from yours. Surely you cannot expect them to honour your name.’

 

‘Furthermore, you will observe that the surface of the earth is girdled and encompassed by a number of different zones; and that the two which are most widely separated from one another, and lie beneath opposite poles of the heavens, are rigid with icy cold, while the central, broadest zone is burnt up with the heat of the sun. Two others, situated between the hot zones and the cold, are habitable. The zone which lies towards the south has no connection with yours at all; it represents your antipodes. As to its northern counterpart, where you yourselves live, you will realize, if you look, what a diminutive section of this region can really be regarded as your property. For the territory you occupy is nothing more than a small island, narrow from north to south, somewhat less narrow from east to west, and surrounded by the sea which is known on earth as the Atlantic, or the Great Sea, or the Ocean. In spite of the grand name this stretch of water bears, you can tell from here how tiny it really is.’

 

‘And I must disabuse you of any idea that your own fame, or the fame of any one of us, could ever be great enough to extend beyond these known and settled lands. It could never scale the Caucasus mountains (you see them down there); it could never swim the river Ganges. Not one of the inhabitants of all those eastern tracts, or the remote west either, or the far off north and south, will ever so much as hear the sound of your name! And once you leave all these hosts of people out of account, you will have to conclude that the area over which your glory is so eager to extend itself is really of the most trifling dimensions.’[2]

 

 

Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio

 

Macrobius, in the 12th chapter of his Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, has derived some of the ancient arcana which it contains from what is here said by Porphyry. A part of what he has further added, I shall translate, on account of its excellence and connexion with the above passage.

 

“Pythagoras thought that the empire of Pluto began downwards from the milky way, because souls falling from thence appear to have already receded from the Gods. Hence he asserts that the nutriment of milk is first offered to infants, because their first motion commences from the galaxy, when they begin to fall into terrene bodies. On this account, since those who are about to descend are yet in Cancer, and have not left the milky way, they rank in the order of the Gods. But when, by falling, they arrive at the Lion, in this constellation they enter on the exordium of their future condition. And because, in the Lion, the rudiments of birth, and certain primary exercises of human nature, commence; but Aquarius is opposite to the Lion, and presently sets after the Lion rises; hence, when the sun is in Aquarius, funeral rites are performed to departed souls, because he is then carried in a sign which is contrary or adverse to human life. From the confine, therefore, in which the zodiac and galaxy touch each other, the soul, descending from a round figure, which is the only divine form, is produced into a cone by its defluxion. And as a line is generated from a point, and proceeds into length from an indivisible, so the soul, from its own point, which is a monad, passes into the duad, which is the first extension. And this is the essence which Plato, in the Timaeus, calls impartible, and at the same time partible, when he speaks of the nature of the mundane soul. For as the soul of the world, so likewise that of man, will be found to be in one respect without division, if the simplicity of a divine nature is considered; and in another respect partible, if we regard the diffusion of the former through the world, and of the latter through the members of the body.

 

“As soon, therefore, as the soul gravitates towards body in this first production of herself, she begins to experience a material tumult, that is, matter flowing into her essence. And this is what Plato remarks in the Phaedo, that the soul is drawn into body staggering with recent intoxication; signifying by this, the new drink of matter's impetuous flood, through which the soul, becoming defiled and heavy, is drawn into a terrene situation. But the starry cup placed between Cancer and the Lion, is a symbol of this mystic truth, signifying that descending souls first experience intoxication in that part of the heavens through the influx of matter. Hence oblivion, the companion of intoxication, there begins silently to creep into the recesses of the soul. For if souls retained in their descent to bodies the memory of divine concerns, of which they were conscious in the heavens, there would be no discussion among men about divinity. But all, indeed, in descending, drink of oblivion; though some more, and others less. On this account, though truth is not apparent to all men on the earth, yet all exercise their opinions about it, because a defect of memory is the origin of opinion. But those discover most have drunk least of oblivion, because they easily remember what they had known before in the heavens.

 

“The soul, therefore, falling with this first weight from the zodiac and milky way into each of the subject spheres, is not only clothed with the accession of a luminous body, but produces the particular motions which it is to exercise in the respective orbs. Thus in Saturn, it energizes according to a ratiocinative and intellective power; in the sphere of Jove, according to a practic power; in the orb of the Sun, according to a sensitive and imaginative nature; but according to the motion of desire in the planet Venus; of pronouncing and interpreting what it perceives in the orb of Mercury; and according to a plantal or vegetable nature, and a power of acting on body, when it enters into the lunar globe. And this sphere, as it is the last among the divine orders, so it is the first in our terrene situation. For this body, as it is the dregs of divine natures, so it is the first animal substance. And this is the difference between terrene and supernal bodies (under the latter of which I comprehend the heaven, the stars, and the more elevated elements) that the latter are called upwards to be the seat of the soul, and merit immortality from the very nature of the region, and an imitation of sublimity; but the soul is drawn down to these terrene bodies, and is on this account said to die when it is enclosed in this fallen region, and the seat of mortality. Nor ought it to cause any disturbance that we have so often mentioned the death of the soul, which we have pronounced to be immortal. For the soul is not extinguished by its own proper death, but is only overwhelmed for a time. Nor does it lose the benefit of perpetuity by its temporal demersion. Since, when it deserves to be purified from the contagion of vice, through its entire refinement from body, it will be restored to the light of perennial life, and will return to its pristine integrity and perfection.’

 

The powers, however, of the planets, which are the causes of the energies of the soul in the several planetary spheres, are more accurately described by Proclus, in p. 260 of his admirable Commentary on the Timaeus, as follows:

 

“If you are willing, also, you may say, that of the beneficent planets, the Moon is the cause to mortals of nature, being herself the visible statue of fontal nature. But the Sun is the Demiurgus of every thing sensible, in consequence of being the cause of sight and visibility. Mercury is the cause of the motions of the phantasy; for of the imaginative essence itself, so far as sense and phantasy are one, the Sun is the producing cause. But Venus is the cause of epithymetic appetites [or of the appetites pertaining to desire]; and Mars, of the irascible motions which are conformable to nature. Of all vital powers, however, Jupiter is the common cause; but of all gnostic powers, Saturn. For all the irrational forms are divided into these.”[3]

 

 

The Wonder of the Heavens

 

The moon, which our mathematicians have calculated to be more than half as big as the earth, moves through the same courses as the sun, sometimes nearer, sometimes further away, and it reflects upon the earth shed on it by the sun, a light that varies with its own phases... In the same courses the planets circle round the earth and in the same way rise and set now quicker and now slower in their motion, and sometimes altogether still. What is there to be seen more beautiful and marvellous that this?[4]

 

Now I ask you whether any sane man can believe that all these constellations, all this glory of the sky, can have been created by the random movements of material atoms? Or that natural forces, devoid of mind or purpose, could create phenomena which not only could not come into existence except through a rational intelligence but the nature of which is so subtle that we must strain our reason to the utmost in the effort to comprehend their mysteries?

 

All this is wonderful, but wonderful too is the stability of the universe, its coherence and endurance, which is perfect beyond our imagination.[5]

 

But I must not dwell too long upon the system of the stars and planets. I will only add that the planets present a symphony of different motions, wherein Saturn above freezes with cold, Mars flames with fire in the middle, and between them Jupiter sheds his genial light. Below Mars are two others which are satellites of the sun. The sun itself sheds its radiance over the whole world, and the moon with its reflected light presides over pregnancies and births and brings all things to fruition in due season.

 

Who cannot wonder at this harmony of things, at this symphony of nature which seems to will the well-being of the world? If there is such a man, then I am very sure that he has never thought upon these things.[6]

 

 

The Power of God

 

If any man cannot feel the power of God when he looks at the stars, then I doubt whether he is capable of any feeling at all. In the heavens there is nothing accidental, nothing arbitrary, nothing out of order, nothing erratic. Everywhere is order, truth, reason, constancy. Those things which lack these qualities - all that is false and delusive and full of error - such things either circle the earth below the orbit of the moon (the lowest of the heavenly bodies) or have their being upon the earth itself. But from the mysterious order and enduring wonder of the heavens flows all saving power and grace. If any one thinks it mindless then he himself must be out of his mind!

 

Most wonderful of all are the movements of those five stars which are wrongly called “the planets” or wandering stars. For there is no ‘wandering’ in a star which through all eternity preserves its constant progress and recession and all its other regular and measured movements.

 

From the diverse movements of these stars the mathematicians have calculated what they call “the Great Year.”[7] This is fulfilled when the sun and moon and these five stars complete their courses and return to the same relative positions which they had at the beginning. [See page 146] There is much disagreement about the length of this “Great Year”, but it is certain that it must comprise fixed and definite period. For the star which we call Saturn, and the Greeks “The Shining One”,  and which is furthest from the earth, completes its orbit in about thirty years... Below this star and nearer to the earth is Jupiter, which the Greeks call “The Blazing One”, Jupiter makes the same journey through the signs of the Zodiac in a period of twelve years,... Next below this star is the nearer orbit of the “fiery One”, which we call Mars. ‘this completes a similar orbit, as I believe, in twenty-four months less six days. Below this is the star, Mercury, which the Greeks call “The Gleaming One”. This is never distant from the Sun by more than a single sign, being sometimes ahead of it and sometimes behind it. The lowest of the five planets is Venus, called “the Light Bearer” by the Greeks - Lucifer in Latin - when it appears in front of the Sun; and when it follows the Sun, Hesperus. But the gods in which we believe are clothed in the most beautiful of forms and dwell in the purest regions of heaven and are so borne along in their orderly courses as to produce a harmony which preserves and protects us all.[8]

 

 

Man Contemplates the Stars

 

Then moreover has not man’s reason penetrated even to the sky? We alone of living creatures know the risings and settings and the courses of the stars, the human race has set limits to the day, the month and year, and has learnt the eclipses of the sun and moon and foretold for all future time their occurrence, their extent and their dates.

 

And contemplating the heavenly bodies the mind arrives at knowledge of the gods, from which arises piety, with its comrades Justice[9] and the rest of the virtues, the sources of a life of happiness that vies with and resembles the divine existence and leaves us inferior to the celestial beings in nothing else save immortality, which is immaterial for happiness. I think that my expression of these matters has been sufficient to prove how widely man’s nature surpasses all other living creatures; and this should make it clear that neither such a conformation and arrangement of the members nor such a power of mind and intellect can possibly have been created by chance.[10]

 

Planetary poem

 

But by what authority or witness can I better employ than yourself [Quintus]? I have even learned by heart and with great pleasure the following lines uttered by the Muse, Urania, in the second book of your poem entitled, My Consulship:

 

First of all, Jupiter, glowing with fire from the regions celestial,

Turnus, and the whole of creation was filled with the light of his glory;

And, through the vaults of aether eternal begird and confine him,

Yet he, with spirit divine, ever searching the earth and the heavens,

Sounds to their innermost depths the thought and actions of mortals.

 

When one has learned the motions and variant paths of the planets,

Stars that abide in the seat of the signs, in the Zodiac’s girdle,

(Spoken of falsely as vagrants or rovers in Greek nomenclature,

Whereas in truth their distance is fixed and their speed is determined.)

Then will he know that all are controlled by divine wisdom....[11]