Letter 108 — On the Approaches to Philosophy (§34)

“Next, he congratulates himself on finding the source of Vergil’s words: Over whose head the mighty gate of Heaven Thunders, remarking that Ennius stole the idea from Homer, and Vergil from Ennius. For there is a couplet by Ennius, preserved in this same book of Cicero’s, On the State: If it be right for a mortal to scale the regions of Heaven, Then the huge gate of the sky opens in glory to me.”