saying, "I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of
Jacob," and adds, "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living,"
implying that ancestors whom the writer of that record supposed to be
dead could not have been thus mentioned.] or thatof the former Greek
colonists in this country who by their schools and teaching made
Southern Italy [Footnote: Latin _Magna Graecia_-the name given to the
cluster of Greek colonies that were scattered thick along the shore of
Southern Italy. At Croton in Magna Graecia Pythagoras established his
school and the colonies were the chief seat and seminary of his
philosophy which taught the immortality of the soul.]--now in its
decline, then flourishing--a seat of learning, or that of him whom the
oracle of Apollo pronounced the wisest of men who said not one thing
to-day, another to-morrow, as many do, but the same thing always,
maintaining that the souls of men are divine, and that when they go out
from the body, the return to heaven is open to them, and direct and easy
in proportion to their integrity and excellence. This was also the
opinion of Scipio, who seemed prescient of the event so near, when, a
very short time before his death, he discoursed for three successive
days about the republic in the presence of Philus, Manilius, and several
others,--you, Scaevola, having gone with me to the conferences,--and
near the close of the discussion he told us what he said that he had
heard from Africanus in a vision during sleep. [Footnote: The _De
Republica_ consists of dialogues on three successive days in Scipio's
garden, and Scipio is the chief speaker. The work was supposed to be
irrecoverably lost, with the exception of this Dream of Scipio and a few
fragments, but considerable portions of it were discovered in a
palimpsest in 1822. The Dream of Scipio will be found in the latter part
of this volume.] If it is true that the soul of every man of surpassing
excellence takes flight, as it were, from the custody and bondage of the
body, to whom can we imagine the way to the gods more easy than to