Arnobius, Against the Nations 2.28
28.1. And yet, lest we leave you without fuller instruction on how you say souls, once wrapped in earthly bodies, have no recollection of prior things, while set in those very bodies and nearly senseless by mixture with them they stubbornly and faithfully hold what eighty years ago or more, if you will, they did or suffered or said or heard.
2. For if it is by the body's obstacle that they do not remember what they knew long ago and before becoming human, it is all the more that they ought to forget what they did while shut in bodies than what they did when placed outside, not yet joined to humans. For what takes away recollection of prior things from things that have entered ought also to wipe out by unrecordable obliteration what was done within itself.
3. For one cause cannot effect two things contrary to itself—so as to put some memories to sleep and allow others to come into the actor's recollection. But if souls, as you call them, are hindered by the obstacle of members from remembering their own ancient arts, how, set in the bodies themselves, do they remember and know that they are souls and have no bodily substance, that they are endowed with the condition of immortality, what rank they hold among things, by what order they are parted from God the Father, by what reason they came to these lowest parts of the world, what qualities from which circles they drew while they slipped into these places?
4. How, I say, do they know that they were most learned and by obstruction of bodies lost what they knew? For they ought not even to have known this itself, if the bodily joining had brought them any stain: for to know what you were and what today you are not is not a sign of lost memory but a proof and evidence of memory preserved.
Latin
28.1. Ac ne tamen instructi non plenius abeamus [ne videamus] a vobis, quemadmodum dicitis animas, cum terrenis fuerint corporibus involutae, priorum reminiscentiam non habere, cum in ipsis corporibus positae et prope insensibiles eorum commixtione perfectae pertinaciter et fideli<ter> teneant ea quae ante annos plures, si velis dicere vel octoginta vel hoc amplius, vel fecerunt vel passae sunt vel locutae sunt vel audierunt.
2. Si enim obstaculo perficitur corporis, ne meminerint eorum quae iamdudum et ante hominem sciebant, magis est ut ea debeant oblivisci quae conclusae in corporibus factitarunt quam quae foris positae, nondum hominibus coniugatae. Quod enim rebus ingressis priorum repetentiam detrahit, et intra se gesta inrecordabili debet obliteratione deperdere.
3. Una enim causa res duas efficere ac sibi contrarias non potest, ut aliorum memorias sopiat, alia patiatur actoris in recordationem venire. Quod si animae quas vocatis membrorum impediuntur obstaculo, quominus artes suas atque antiquas reminiscantur, in corporibus ipsis quemadmodum constitutae meminerunt et sciunt animas se esse et corporalem substantiam non habere, inmortalitatis condicione mactatas, quem tenent in rebus gradum, quo sint ordine a deo patre discretae, ad infima haec mundi quanam ratione pervenerint, quas ex quibus circulis qualitates, dum in haec loca labuntur, adtraxerint?
4. Quemadmodum, inquam, sciunt doctissimas se fuisse et obstructione corporum amisisse quae noverant? Et hoc ipsum enim nescire debuerant, si aliquid eis labis corporalis invexi sset adiunctio: Nam scire quid fueris et quid hodie non sis, non est signum memoriae perditae sed comprobatio indiciumque servatae.