But about the very
same time as we heard this, it chanced at Carthage that the
rhetorician Eulogius, who had been my disciple in that art, being (as
he himself, after our return to Africa, told us the story) in course
of lecturing to his disciples on Cicero's rhetorical books, as he
looked over the portion of reading which he was to deliver on the
following day, fell upon a certain passage, and not being able to
understand it, was scarce able to sleep for the trouble of his mind:
in which night, as he dreamed, I expounded to him that which he did
not understand; nay, not I, but my likeness, while I was unconscious
of the thing and far away beyond sea, it might be doing, or it might
be dreaming, some other thing, and not in the least caring for his
cares. In what way these things come about I know not; but in what
way soever they come, why do we not believe it comes in the same way
for a person in a dream to see a dead man, as it comes that he sees a
living man? both, no doubt, neither knowing nor caring who dreams of
their images, or where or when.
"Like dreams, moreover, are some visions of persons awake, who have
had their senses troubled, such as phrenetic persons, or those who are
mad in any way, for they, too, talk to themselves just as though they
were speaking to people verily present, and as well with absent men as
with present, whose images they perceive whether persons living or
dead.
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