fellow-citizens held him has been shown by the signs of mourning
which accompanied his obsequies. What could such a man have
gained by the addition of a few years? Though age need not be a
burden,-as I remember Cato arguing in the presence of myself and
Scipio two years before he died,-yet it cannot but take away the
vigour and freshness which Scipio was still enjoying. We may
conclude therefore that his life, from the good fortune which had
attended him and the glory he had obtained, was so circumstanced
that it could not be bettered, while the suddenness of his death
saved him the sensation of dying. As to the manner of his death it
is difficult to speak; you see what people suspect. Thus much,
however, I may say: Scipio in his lifetime saw many days of
supreme triumph and exultation, but none more magnificent than
his last, on which, upon the rising of the Senate, he was escorted
by the senators and the people of Rome, by the allies, and by the
Latins, to his own door. From such an elevation of popular esteem
the next step seems naturally to be an ascent to the gods above,
rather than a descent to Hades.

4. For I am not one of these modern philosophers who maintain
that our souls perish with our bodies, and that death ends all. With
me ancient opinion has more weight: whether it be that of our own
ancestors, who attributed such solemn observances to the dead, as
they plainly would not have done if they had believed them to be
wholly annihilated; or that of the philosophers who once visited
this country, and who by their maxims and doctrines educated
Magna Graecia, which at that time was in a flourishing condition,
though it has now been ruined; or that of the man who was
declared by Apollo's oracle to be "most wise," and who used to
teach without the variation which is to be found in most