Somnium Scipionis, Part XV

And as soon as I began to be able to speak, with my weeping having been repressed, I say, “I ask, most sacred and best father, since this is life, as I hear Africanus say, why do I delay in the lands? Why don’t I hasten to come here to you?” He says, “It is not thus. For unless that god, of whom is this temple and all which you see, will have ever freed you from those confinements of the body, the approach here is not able to be open to you. For men were begotten on this condition, who guard that globe, which you see to be the middle in this temple, which is called the earth, and to those a soul was given from those everlasting fires which you call the constellations and the stars, which, spherical and round, animated with divine minds, complete their orbits and circles with marvelous quickness. Therefore, Publius, the soul must be retained by both you and all good men in the keeping of the body, nor without his command from whom that was given to you must it be departed from the life of men, lest you should seem to have avoided the human duty assigned by god.