Macrobius was a late Roman writer known for his commentaries of the writings of earlier authors. This book contains his commentary on Cicero's Somnium Scipionis (Dream of Scipio), from his otherwise lost history of the Roman Republic. Cicero's text is a philosophical exercise set during an imagined dream of the general Scipio Aemilianus in the years prior to his conquest and destruction of the city of Carthage. In the dream Scipio Aemilianus has a vision of his late grandfather, Scipio Africanus, the great hero of the Second Punic War, who appears to him, reveals his destiny and explains the workings of the universe.
Macrobius's commentary on the work offers many different theories on the meaning of Cicero's text and is an important source for neoplatonic philosophy in late antiquity. Because of the way in which Macrobius prepared his commentary, by copying each paragraph of Cicero's work before adding his comments at the end, he inadvertantly ensured that the Somnium Scipionis was the only part of a much larger work that survived to the present.