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“
[80]
Nor, indeed, would
the fame of illustrious men survive their death if
the souls of those very men did not cause us to retain
their memory longer. I, for my part, could never
be persuaded that souls, which lived while they were
in human bodies, perished when they left those
bodies; nor, indeed, that the soul became incapable
of thought when it had escaped from the unthinking
[p. 93]
corpse, but rather that, when it had been freed from
every admixture of flesh and had begun to exist
pure and undefiled, then only was it wise. And
even when man is dissolved by death it is evident
to the sight whither each bodily element departs;
for the corporeal returns to the visible constituents
from which it came, but the soul alone remains
unseen, both when it is present and when it departs.
Again, you really see nothing resembling death
so much as sleep; ”
Cicero: De Senectute De Amicitia De Divinatione. With An English Translation. William Armistead Falconer. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1923.
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