In the De cura pro mortuis gerenda (11), Augustine tells us, that upon his return to Africa in AD 388, his student Eulogius reported a dream in which Augustine had explained a difficult passage of Cicero to him. The dream would have happened while Augustine was at Milan (apud Mediolanum), or during the period AD 384-6 (Courcelle 1958b: 360).

    The identification of Augustine’s student - the Carthaginis rhetor Eulogius - with Favonius Eulogius orator almae Carthaginis, the author of the Disputatio de Somnio Scipionis, originally goes back to Fabricius: haud diversus hic [scil. Favonius Eulogius] mihi videtur ab Eulogio S. Augustini discipulo (Fabricius, Bibliotheca Latina 1.8).  Scholars now universally accept this identification, and it has even been suggested that the vision reported by Augustine is an expression of Favonius’ interest in the Somnium Scipionis (Caldini Montanari 2002: 365).

    The work is dedicated to a certain Superius, characterized in an inscriptio as a vir clarissimus et consularis provinciae Byzacenae.  We have no other information about Superius, and we are not even wholly certain about pieces of information transmitted by the inscriptiones.  In fact, it has been shown that Superius was not a former consul (consularis), but a mere governor (Cameron 1966: 33).  The thesis according to which Superius would have been a student of Favonius (Sicherl 1959b: 358) has likewise been refuted in recent years (Dorfbauer 2011b: 503-11; Marcellino 2012: 11).  [G. Cattaneo; tr. C. L. Caterine].