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[13]
4. For I do not agree with those who have
recently begun to argue that soul and body perish
at the same time, and that all things are destroyed
by death. I give greater weight to the old-time
view, whether it be that of our forefathers, who
paid such reverential rites to the dead, which they
surely would not have done if they had believed
those rites were a matter of indifference to the
[p. 123]
dead; or, whether it be the view of those1 who
lived in this land and by their principles and precepts brought culture to Great Greece,2 which now,
I admit, is wholly destroyed, but was then flourishing;
or, whether it be the view of him who was adjudged
by the oracle of Apollo to be the wisest of men,
who, though he would argue on most subjects now
on one side and now on the other, yet always consistently maintained that human souls were of
God; that upon their departure from the body a
return to heaven lay open to them, and that in
proportion as each soul was virtuous and just
would the return be easy and direct.
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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