Book 1

pr.1. I have resolved to arrange in order the deeds and sayings of the city of Rome and of foreign nations worth remembering, selected from distinguished authors, which lie scattered too widely in others to be quickly grasped, so that those wishing to draw examples may be spared the labour of a long search. Nor has the desire to encompass everything taken hold of me: for who could comprise the achievements of every age in a modest number of volumes, or who in his right mind could hope to hand on the sequence of domestic and foreign history, set down by the felicitous pen of his predecessors, with greater care or more outstanding eloquence? I therefore call upon you for this undertaking, Caesar, surest salvation of the fatherland, in whom the agreement of men and gods has willed the governance of sea and land to reside, by whose heavenly providence the virtues of which I am about to speak are most kindly fostered, and the vices most severely punished: for if the orators of old began well from Jupiter Best and Greatest, if the most excellent poets drew their beginnings from some divine power, then my littleness will the more justly have recourse to your favour, inasmuch as the rest of divinity is gathered by belief, while yours, by the evidence before our eyes, seems equal to the star of your father and grandfather, by whose surpassing brilliance much renowned splendour has been added to our rites: for the rest of the gods we received, but the Caesars we ourselves gave. And since it is my intention to take my beginning from the worship of the gods, I shall discourse summarily upon its condition.

1.1. ON RELIGION. Our ancestors willed that the fixed and solemn ceremonies should be expounded by the knowledge of the pontiffs, the authorities for conducting affairs well by the observation of the augurs, the predictions of Apollo by the books of the seers, the averting of portents by the Etruscan discipline. By ancient institution, too, attention is given to divine matters: when something is to be commended to the gods, by prayer; when something is to be sought, by a vow; when a vow is to be discharged, by thanksgiving; when an inquiry is to be made by entrails or lots, by consulting them; when a solemn rite is to be performed, by sacrifice, by which also the warnings of prodigies and lightning-strokes are dealt with. So great, moreover, was the zeal of the ancients not only for preserving but even for enlarging religion, that, at a time when the state was most flourishing and most wealthy, by a decree of the senate the sons of ten leading men were handed over to the several peoples of Etruria, one to each, in order to acquire the discipline of the sacred rites; and for Ceres, whom they had established the custom of worshipping in the Greek manner, they sought a priestess from Velia, named Calliphana, by name, although that town had not yet received the citizenship, lest the goddess should lack a priestess skilled in her ancient rites. And although they had in the city a most beautiful temple of hers, when in the disturbance of Gracchus they were warned by the Sibylline books to placate the most ancient Ceres, they sent the Ten Men to Henna to propitiate her, since they believed her rites had sprung from there. Likewise our generals, when masters of their victories, having undertaken vows, often went to Pessinus to discharge them to the Mother of the gods.

1.2. Metellus, the chief pontiff, would not allow the consul Postumius, who was also flamen of Mars, when he was setting out for Africa to wage war, to leave the city, lest he depart from the sacred duties, and he imposed a fine upon him; and the highest authority yielded to religion, because it did not seem that Postumius could safely commit himself to the contest of Mars while the ceremonies of Mars were deserted.

1.3. Praiseworthy was the religious compliance of the twelve fasces, more praiseworthy the obedience of the four-and-twenty in a like matter: for when Tiberius Gracchus had sent a letter from his province to the college of augurs, in which he indicated that, while reading the books pertaining to the sacred rites of the people, he had noticed that at the consular elections which he himself had held the tabernacle had been taken with a fault; and when this had been reported by the augurs to the senate, by its order C. Figulus returned to Rome from Gaul and Scipio Nasica from Corsica, and they abdicated the consulship.

1.4. On a similar principle, P. Cloelius Siculus, M. Cornelius Cethegus, and C. Claudius were ordered, and even compelled, to give up the office of flamen because the entrails had been brought forward with too little care.

1.5. But when, while Q. Sulpicius was sacrificing, his cap slipped from his head, this lost him the same priesthood; and the squeaking of a shrew-mouse, heard by Fabius Maximus and C. Flaminius, gave cause for laying down, the one his dictatorship, the other his mastership of the horse.

1.6. To these must be added that a Vestal Virgin was judged by P. Licinius, the chief pontiff, to deserve admonition with the lash, because on a certain night she had been too careless a guardian of the eternal fire.

1.7. But the divine power of Vesta preserved a pupil of the chief Virgin Aemilia, when the fire had gone out, safe from all blame: for when, as she prayed, she had placed upon the hearth a piece of fine linen, the best she had, the fire suddenly blazed up.

1.8. It is no wonder, therefore, if for the increase and protection of this empire the persistent indulgence of the gods has ever kept watch, an empire in which the smallest matters of religion are seen to be weighed with such scrupulous care; for our state must be reckoned never to have turned its eyes away from the most exact observance of the ceremonies. In this state, when M. Marcellus, holding his fifth consulship, wished to consecrate, in fulfilment of vows undertaken, a temple to Honour and Virtue, first at Clastidium and afterwards at the capture of Syracuse, he was prevented by the college of pontiffs, who denied that one shrine could rightly be dedicated to two gods: for, they said, if any prodigy should occur in it, it could not be told to which of the two the rite ought to be performed, and it was not customary to sacrifice to two gods at once except to gods of a fixed pair. By this admonition of the pontiffs it was brought about that Marcellus set up the images of Honour and Virtue in separate buildings; and neither did the authority of that most eminent man prove an obstacle to the college of pontiffs, nor the additional expense to Marcellus, to prevent religion from being restored to its own proper course and observance.

1.9. L. Furius Bibaculus is overshadowed by so many and so illustrious consulships, and scarcely finds a place for an example after Marcellus, yet he must not be defrauded of the praise of a pious and religious spirit. As praetor he carried the sacred shields, the ancilia, by order of his father, who was master of the college of the Salii, with six lictors going before him, although by virtue of the privilege of his office he had exemption from this duty: for our state has always held that all things must be placed after religion, even in those matters in which it wished the honour of supreme majesty to be conspicuous. Wherefore they did not hesitate to make their commands serve the sacred rites, judging that they would have the governance of human affairs in their power if they had served the divine power well and steadfastly.

1.10. This judgement of the mind was at work in the breasts of private citizens too: for when the city had been captured by the Gauls, and the flamen of Quirinus and the Vestal Virgins were carrying the sacred objects with the burden divided between them, and when L. Albanius, conveying his wife and children in a cart, had caught sight of them as they crossed the Sublician bridge and began to climb the slope that leads to the Janiculum, being closer to public religion than to private affection, he ordered his own people to get down from the cart, and, placing the Virgins and the sacred objects upon it, abandoned the journey he had begun and conveyed them to the town of Caere, where they were received with the utmost veneration. The grateful memory of this even to our own day bears witness to that hospitable kindness: for from there came the institution that sacred rites are called "ceremonies," because the people of Caere honoured them devoutly even when the condition of the state was broken, just as they would in its flourishing. That rustic and rather mean cart of theirs, opportunely capacious, might either equal or surpass the glory of any most resplendent triumphal chariot.

1.11. At the same crisis of the state C. Fabius Dorsuo gave a memorable example of religion preserved: for when the Gauls were besieging the Capitol, lest the regular sacrifice of the Fabian clan should be interrupted, girded in the Gabine fashion, carrying the sacred objects in his hands and on his shoulders, he passed through the midst of the enemy's outposts to the Quirinal hill. There, having performed everything in the customary solemn manner, he returned to the Capitol, with almost divine veneration, a victor over the victorious arms as if conqueror himself.

1.12. Great care for preserving religion was also taken among our ancestors in the consulship of P. Cornelius and Baebius Tamphilus. For when, in the field of L. Petilius the scribe, beneath the Janiculum, the cultivators were turning the earth rather deeply and two stone chests were found, in one of which an inscription indicated that the body of Numa Pompilius had lain, while in the other were stored away seven books in Latin concerning the law of the pontiffs and as many in Greek concerning the discipline of wisdom, they took care that the Latin books should be preserved with great diligence; but the Greek ones, because they were thought in some part to pertain to the dissolution of religion, Q. Petilius, the city praetor, by authority of the senate, had burned by the sacrificial attendants in a fire kindled in the sight of the people: for the men of old did not wish anything to be preserved in this state by which the minds of men might be drawn away from the worship of the gods.

1.13. King Tarquinius, moreover, ordered M. Atilius the duumvir, because he had given to Petronius Sabinus, having been bribed, a book containing the secret of the rites of the civil sacred ceremonies, which had been entrusted to his keeping, to be sewn up in a sack and thrown into the sea; and that kind of punishment was long afterwards prescribed by law for parricides, and most justly so, since the violation of parents and of the gods must be expiated by an equal penalty.

1.14. But in matters that pertain to the guardianship of religion, I am not sure whether M. Atilius Regulus surpassed all men, who, from a most glorious victor reduced by the treachery of Hasdrubal and of Xanthippus, the Spartan general, to the wretched fortune of a captive, and sent to the senate and people of Rome as an envoy, that he, a single old man, might be exchanged for several young Carthaginians, gave advice to the contrary and returned to Carthage, not, indeed, ignorant to what cruel men, and to men justly hostile to him, he was returning, but because he had sworn to them that, if their captives were not given back, he would return to them. The immortal gods could surely have softened that savage cruelty; but, that the glory of Atilius might be the brighter, they suffered the Carthaginians to follow their own character, since in the third Punic war, by the destruction of their city, they were to pay the just penalties for having so cruelly tormented a most religious spirit.

1.15. How much more venerable toward the gods was the senate of our state! which, after the disaster at Cannae, decreed that matrons should not extend their mourning beyond the thirtieth day, so that the rites of Ceres might be performed by them, since, with nearly the greater part of the Roman manhood lying on that accursed and dreadful soil, no household was free of grief. And so mothers and daughters and wives and sisters of the recently slain were compelled to wipe away their tears, lay aside the tokens of their grief, put on white garments, and offer incense at the altars. By this firmness in maintaining religion a great blush was brought upon the gods of heaven for raging any further against that nation which could not be deterred from their worship even by the bitterness of its injuries.

1.16. It was believed that the consul Varro fought so unsuccessfully against the Carthaginians at Cannae because of the wrath of Juno, since, when as aedile he was holding the circus games, he had placed, on the chariot of Jupiter Best and Greatest, a boy-actor of remarkable beauty to hold the trappings. This deed, recalled to memory some years later, was expiated by sacrifices.

1.17. Hercules too is recorded to have exacted both a grave and a manifest penalty for his religion being withdrawn from him: for when the Potitii had transferred the rite of his sacred ceremonies, which they had held as if by inheritance, assigned by him as a gift to their clan, at the prompting of Appius the censor to the lowly ministry of public slaves, all of them, who were more than thirty in number, men of full age, perished within a year, and the name of the Potitii, divided into twelve families, all but became extinct, while Appius himself lost his sight.

1.18. A keen avenger of his own divine power was Apollo also, who, when Carthage had been overcome by the Romans and he was stripped of his golden robe, brought it about that the sacrilegious hands were found cut off amid the fragments of his statue.

1.19. No less effective an avenger of contempt for religion was his son too, Aesculapius, who, when a grove consecrated to his temple had for the most part been cut down by Turullius, a prefect of Antony, to build ships for him, . . . in the very midst of that wicked ministry, when the party of Antony had been defeated and Turullius had been marked out for death by the command of Caesar, by the manifest powers of his divine will dragged him to the very place which he had violated, and brought it about that there above all he was killed by Caesar's soldiers, so that by the same death he both paid the penalty for the trees already cut down and secured immunity from a like injury for those still standing, and multiplied for the gods the veneration which he had always enjoyed in the highest degree among his worshippers.

1.20. Q. Fulvius Flaccus, moreover, did not go unpunished, because in his censorship he transferred marble tiles from the temple of Juno Lacinia to the temple of Equestrian Fortune which he was building at Rome: for it is said that after this deed his mind was no longer sound. Indeed he expired in the deepest sickness of soul, when he had heard that, of his two sons serving in Illyricum, the one had died and the other was gravely afflicted. Moved by his misfortune, the senate took care that the tiles should be carried back to Locri, and by the most circumspect sanctity of a decree undid the impious work of the censor;

1.21. just as, by Hercules, it avenged with a just punishment the wicked greed of Pleminius, the legate of Scipio, in plundering the treasury of Proserpina: for when it had ordered him to be dragged in chains to Rome, [he,] before pleading his cause, was consumed in prison by a most foul kind of disease, and the goddess, by the order of the same senate, and indeed by doubling the sum, recovered her money.

1e.1. As to the crime of Pleminius, it was well avenged by the conscript fathers; but as to the violent profanation by King Pyrrhus, she defended herself powerfully and effectively: for when the Locrians had been compelled to give him a great sum of money out of her treasury, as he was sailing loaded with his impious plunder, by the force of a sudden storm he was dashed, with his whole fleet, upon the shores neighbouring the goddess; and there the money, found unharmed, was restored to the keeping of the most holy treasury.

1e.2. But King Masinissa did not act in a like manner. For when his admiral had put in at Melita and had likewise carried off from the temple of Juno ivory tusks of extraordinary size and brought them to him as a gift, as soon as he learned whence they had been conveyed, he had them carried back to Melita in a quinquereme and placed in the temple of Juno, engraved with letters of his nation indicating that the king had received them in ignorance and had gladly restored them to the goddess. A deed befitting the character of Masinissa rather than Punic blood!

1e.3. And yet what need is there to weigh character by nation? A man born in the midst of barbarism undid another's sacrilege; a man born at Syracuse, Dionysius, took it for a kind of pleasure to follow up so many of his own sacrileges, as many as we shall now relate, with jesting remarks. For when he had plundered the temple of Proserpina at Locri, as he was being carried over the deep with a favouring wind for his fleet, he said to his friends with a laugh: "Do you see what good sailing is granted to sacrilegious men by the immortal gods themselves?" Having stripped also from Olympian Jupiter a golden mantle of great weight, with which the tyrant Gelo had adorned him from the spoils of the Carthaginians, and having thrown over him a woollen cloak, he said that the golden mantle was heavy in summer and cold in winter, while the woollen one was more suited to both seasons of the year. The same man ordered the golden beard to be taken away from Aesculapius at Epidaurus, declaring that it was not fitting that his father Apollo should be seen beardless and he himself bearded. The same man took away silver and golden tables from the shrines, and because there was written upon them, in the manner of Greece, that they belonged to the good gods, he declared that he was making use of their goodness. The same man would carry off the golden Victories and bowls and crowns which were held out by the outstretched hands of the statues, saying that he was accepting them, not taking them away, and that it would be utterly foolish to argue that, from those of whom we pray for blessings, we should be unwilling to take what they hold out to us. This man, although he did not pay the penalties he owed, yet by the disgrace of his son made satisfaction in death for the punishments he had escaped in life: for with slow step the divine wrath proceeds to its vengeance, and compensates for the tardiness of the punishment by its severity.

1e.4. That he might not fall into this, Timasitheus, leader of the people of Lipara, provided by a counsel useful to himself in a way different from that useful to his whole country, by his example: for when a golden bowl of great weight, which the Romans had dedicated to Pythian Apollo by the title of a tithe, had been intercepted in the strait by his fellow-citizens who were practising piracy, and the people were being urged to divide it, when he learned . . .

4e.2. To King Deiotarus, who did almost everything by auspice, the sight of an eagle proved salutary; for, having seen it, he kept himself from using a certain dwelling, which on the following night was levelled with the ground by collapse.

5.1. ON OMENS. The observation of omens too is woven by some contact into religion, since they are believed to come about not by chance movement but by divine providence. This it was that brought it to pass that, when the city had been scattered by the Gauls, and the conscript fathers were deliberating whether they should migrate to Veii or restore their own walls, it happened that at that time, as the cohorts on guard duty were returning, a centurion cried out in the assembly-place: "Standard-bearer, plant the standard; here we shall best remain." On hearing this voice the senate answered that it accepted the omen, and at once abandoned the plan of crossing over to Veii. In how few words was the condition of the future seat of the supreme empire confirmed! I believe the gods deemed it unworthy that the Roman name, sprung under the most prosperous auspices, should be changed for the name of the city of Veii, and that the honour of so renowned a victory should be poured out among the ruins of a city just cast down.

5.2. The author of this so splendid work, Camillus, when he had prayed that, if to any of the gods the excessive good fortune of the Roman people should seem too great, that god's envy might be satisfied by some misfortune of his own, suddenly fell by a slip. This was thought to have pertained to the condemnation by which he was afterwards oppressed. Deservedly might the victory and the pious prayer of that most eminent man contend with each other for praise: for it is equally the mark of virtue both to have increased the goods of the fatherland and to have wished its evils transferred to oneself.

5.3. How memorable, too, was that which happened to the consul L. Paulus! When it had fallen to him by lot to wage war against King Perseus, and, on returning home from the senate-house, he had kissed his little daughter, named Tertia, who was then quite small, and noticed that she was sad, he asked her why she had such a look. She replied that Persa had perished. Now a little puppy had died, which the girl had had as a pet, named Persa. Paulus therefore seized upon the omen, and from the chance saying conceived in his mind, as it were, a sure hope of a most glorious triumph.

5.4. But Caecilia, wife of Metellus, while by ancient custom, in the dead of night, she was seeking a nuptial omen for her sister's daughter, a marriageable maiden, herself produced it: for when she had sat for a good while in a certain little shrine for this purpose, and no voice agreeing with her aim had been heard, the girl, weary with the long standing, asked her aunt to lend her her place for a little while to sit down. To which the other said: "Indeed I gladly yield you my seat." This saying, springing from kindness, came to the issue of a sure omen, since Metellus, not long afterwards, when Caecilia had died, took in marriage the maiden of whom I speak.

5.5. For C. Marius, too, the observation of an omen was without doubt his salvation, at the time when, judged a public enemy by the senate, he was led into the house of Fannia at Minturnae to be kept in custody. For he noticed that a little ass, when fodder was thrown to it, neglected it and ran off to water. By this sight, judging that what would follow was set before him by the providence of the gods, being moreover most skilled in interpreting religious signs, he obtained from the multitude, which had flocked together to bring him aid, that he should be led to the sea; and straightway he boarded a little boat, and, conveyed by it to Africa, escaped the victorious arms of Sulla.

5.6. Pompey the Great, however, when defeated by Caesar in the battle of Pharsalus, seeking safety in flight, directed his course by fleet to the island of Cyprus, in order to gather some forces there, and, putting in at the town of Paphus, he caught sight on the shore of a handsome building and asked the helmsman what its name was. He answered that it was called "Kakobasileia" ["Evil-kingdom"]. This word lessened his hope, slight as it was, nor did he bear it without showing it: for he turned his eyes away from those roofs and revealed by a groan the grief he had taken from the dire omen.

5.7. The fitting outcome of M. Brutus, deserving of the parricide he had committed, was marked out by an omen, since after that wicked deed, while celebrating his birthday and wishing to bring out a Greek verse, he set his mind to quote especially that Homeric line: "But baneful fate and the son of Leto slew me"; and that god, given as a watchword by Caesar and Antony at the battle of Philippi, turned his weapons against him.

5.8. With a consistent throw of the voice fortune tweaked the ear of C. Cassius, whom, when the Rhodians begged that they might not be stripped by him of all the images of their gods, she willed to answer that the Sun was left to them by him; so that she might draw out the insolence of the most rapacious victor by the swelling of his saying, and might compel him, cast down in the battle of Macedonia, to leave behind in very truth, not the image of the Sun, which alone he had yielded to the suppliants, but the Sun itself.

5.9. Worthy of note too is that omen under which the consul Petilius fell while waging war in Liguria: for when he was attacking a mountain whose surname was Letum ["Death"], and amid his exhortation of the soldiers had said, "Today I shall by all means take Letum," by fighting too rashly he confirmed the chance throw of his voice by his own death.

5e.1. Two foreign examples of the same kind may not absurdly be added to ours. When the people of Priene were imploring help against the Carians, the Samians, prompted by arrogance, instead of a fleet and an army sent them, by way of mockery, a Sibyl. They, interpreting her as a defence given as if by divine power, gladly received her and had her as their leader to victory, by her true prediction of the fates.

5e.2. Nor did the Apolloniates repent, who, when, hard pressed in the Illyrian war, they had begged the Epidamnians to bring them aid, and the others had said that they were sending a river near their walls, named Aeas, to their assistance, answered, "We accept what is given," and assigned it the first place in the line of battle as if to a commander: for, having unexpectedly overcome the enemy and ascribing their success to the omen, they then sacrificed to Aeas as to a god, and thereafter made it their custom to use him as commander in all their battles.

6.pr. ON PRODIGIES. Of prodigies too, whether they have turned out favourable or adverse, an account is owed to my purpose.

6.1. The eyes of his household noted that a flame flashed about the head of Servius Tullius while he was still a little boy, sleeping. This prodigy, marvelled at by Tanaquil, the wife of King Ancus Marcius, caused her to bring up the slave-born child after the manner of a son and raise him to the royal pinnacle.

6.2. Of an equally happy outcome was that flame which shone forth from the head of L. Marcius, the commander of the two armies which the destruction of Publius and Gnaeus Scipio in Spain had crippled, while he was haranguing the troops: for the soldiers, still terrified, were admonished by the sight of it to recover their former courage, and, with eight-and-thirty thousand of the enemy slain and a great number reduced to their power, they captured two camps filled with Punic wealth.

6.3. Likewise, when in a fierce and protracted war the Veientines, driven within their walls by the Romans, could not be captured, and that delay seemed no less intolerable to the besiegers than to the besieged, the immortal gods opened the way to the longed-for victory by a marvellous prodigy: for suddenly the Alban lake, neither swollen by rains from heaven nor aided by the flooding of any river, exceeded its usual level of standing water. To investigate this, envoys were sent to the Delphic oracle, and they reported that the lots prescribed that the water of that lake should be let out and spread over the fields: for thus the Veientines would come into the power of the Roman people. And before the envoys reported this, a soothsayer of the Veientines, seized by one of our soldiers, because native interpreters were lacking, and carried into the camp, had foretold the future. The senate, therefore, warned by the double prediction, at almost the same time both obeyed religion and became master of the enemy's city.

6.4. Nor was the success that follows any less prosperous. The consul L. Sulla, in the Social War, when he was sacrificing before the headquarters in the territory of Nola, suddenly caught sight of a snake gliding out from the lowest part of the altar. At this sight, on the urging of the soothsayer Postumius, he immediately led the army out on campaign and captured the most strongly defended camp of the Samnites. This victory became the first step and foundation of his future most ample power.

6.5. Of especial wonder, too, were those prodigies which occurred in our city in the consulship of C. Volumnius and Ser. Sulpicius, amid the beginnings and disturbances of wars: for an ox, with its lowing turned into human speech, terrified the minds of the hearers by the novelty of the portent. Pieces of flesh too, scattered like rain, fell down, the greater number of which the birds of prey snatched away, while the rest lay on the ground for several days, changed neither by foul smell nor by deformed appearance. Portents of the same kind were believed in another disturbance: that a six-month-old infant boy in the cattle-market cried "Triumph"; that another was born with the head of an elephant; that in Picenum it rained stones; that in Gaul a wolf drew the sword from the scabbard of a sentinel; that in Sardinia two shields sweated blood; that at Antium bloody ears of corn fell into the basket of the reapers; that the waters at Caere flowed mingled with blood. In the second Punic war too it was established that the ox of Cn. Domitius said, "Beware for yourself, Rome."

6.6. C. Flaminius, moreover, made consul without auspices, when, being about to engage Hannibal at Lake Trasimene, he had ordered the standards to be plucked up, his horse slipping, was thrown to the ground over its head; and, in no way checked by that prodigy, when the standard-bearers said the standards could not be moved from their place, he threatened them with chastisement unless they straightway dug them out. But would that he had paid the penalty of this rashness with his own great disaster only, and not also with that of the Roman people! For in that battle fifteen thousand Romans were slain, six thousand captured, ten thousand put to flight. The body of the slaughtered consul was sought by Hannibal for burial, by him who, so far as in him lay, had buried the Roman empire.

6.7. The headlong audacity of Flaminius is followed by the mad persistence of C. Hostilius Mancinus. To this consul, as he was about to go to Spain, these prodigies occurred: when he wished to make a sacrifice at Lavinium, the sacred chickens, released from the coop, fled into the nearest wood, and, sought with the utmost diligence, could not be found. When he was embarking from the harbour of Hercules, to which he had come on foot, a voice of this kind, without any author, came to his ears: "Mancinus, stay." Terrified by this, when, having changed his journey, he had made for Genua and there had entered a small boat, a snake of remarkable size, seen, vanished from sight. Thus he equalled the number of prodigies with the number of calamities: by an unlucky battle, a shameful treaty, and a disastrous surrender.

6.8. The sad death of Ti. Gracchus, a most weighty citizen, announced by a prodigy and not avoided by counsel, makes the rashness of Mancinus, a man of too little judgement, seem less to be wondered at: for when as consul he was sacrificing among the Lucanians, two snakes, having slipped out from a hiding-place, suddenly devoured the liver of the victim he had immolated and withdrew into the same lairs. On account of this, then, when the sacrifice had been renewed, the same prodigy occurred. When a third victim too had been slain and the entrails more diligently watched, the gliding of the serpents could neither be kept off nor their flight hindered. Although the soothsayers said that this pertained to the safety of the commander, Gracchus nevertheless did not take care to avoid being led, by the treachery of his treacherous host Flavius, into the place where the Carthaginian general Mago lay hidden with an armed band, and being there slain unarmed.

6.9. The partnership of consulship, the fellowship of error, and the like kind of death draw me from Ti. Gracchus to the memory of M. Marcellus. He, inflamed by the glory of the capture of Syracuse and of Hannibal being for the first time compelled by him to flee before the walls of Nola, when he was striving with the greatest zeal either to lay low the Carthaginian army in Italy or to drive it from Italy, and was inquiring into the will of the gods by a solemn sacrifice, the first victim that fell before the hearth had its liver found without a head, the next had a double head to its liver. When these had been examined, the soothsayer with a sad countenance answered that the entrails did not please him, because, after the mutilated one, the favourable had appeared. Thus warned not to attempt anything rashly, M. Marcellus, having dared on the following night to go out with a few men for the sake of reconnoitring, was surrounded by a multitude of the enemy among the Bruttii, and by his death brought equally great grief and loss to his country.

6.10. For the consul Octavius feared the dire omen, yet could not avoid it: for from a statue of Apollo, whose head had broken off of itself and so fixed itself in the ground that it could not be torn away, Cinna, who was at variance in arms with his colleague, conceived in his mind that his own destruction was thereby signified, and fell, in the augury for his own fears, by a sad end of life; and only then could the immovable head of the god be loosed from the earth.

6.11. M. Crassus, to be numbered among the gravest losses of the Roman empire, does not permit us to keep silence about himself in this place, struck before so great a ruin by very many and most evident blows of portents. He was about to lead his army from Carrhae against the Parthians. A dark-coloured general's cloak was handed to him, when white or purple is usually given to those going out to battle. Sad and silent the soldiers gathered at the headquarters, who, by ancient custom, ought to have come running with a lively shout. One of the eagles could scarcely be plucked up by the chief centurion; the other, drawn out with the greatest difficulty, turned itself in the direction opposite to that in which it was being carried. Great were these prodigies, but those disasters were considerably greater: the destruction of so many most beautiful legions, so many standards intercepted by the enemy's hands, so great a glory of Roman soldiery crushed by the cavalry of the barbarians, the eyes of the father bespattered with the blood of a son of the best disposition, the body of the general cast amid the promiscuous heaps of corpses for the rending of birds and beasts. I could wish indeed to relate it more gently, but what is told is true. Thus the warnings of the gods, when despised, blaze up; thus human counsels are chastised, when they set themselves before the heavenly.

6.12. Almighty Jupiter, too, had abundantly warned Cn. Pompey not to strive to make trial of the last fortune of war against C. Caesar, hurling lightning against his column as it left Dyrrachium, obscuring the standards with swarms of bees, entangling the minds of the soldiers with sudden gloom, terrifying the whole army with nocturnal alarms, and causing the flight of the victims from the very altars. But the unconquered laws of necessity did not allow a breast otherwise far removed from madness to weigh those prodigies with just estimation. And so, while he made light of them, he shattered in the space of a single day his most ample authority, his power loftier than any private station, and all those distinctions which from his earliest youth he had gathered even to the point of envy. After which it is established that in the shrines of the gods the statues turned of their own accord; that the shout of soldiers and the din of arms was heard so loud at Antioch and Ptolemais that men ran to the walls; that the sound of drums issued from the hidden parts of the shrine at Pergamum; that at Tralles, in the temple of Victory, beneath the statue of Caesar, a green palm of fair size sprang up among the joints of the stones. From which it is clear that the divine power of the gods both favoured the glory of Caesar and wished to restrain the error of Pompey.

6.13. Revering your altars and your most holy temples, divine Julius, I pray that with your propitious and favouring divine power you may suffer the misfortunes of such great men to lie hidden under the protection and tutelage of your example: for we have received it that, on that day on which, clad in a purple robe, you sat down on a golden chair, lest you should seem to have scorned an honour sought out with the greatest zeal of the senate and bestowed on you, before you offered the sight of yourself, longed for, to the eyes of the citizens, you devoted yourself to the worship of religion, into which you were soon to pass; and that, when a fat ox had been sacrificed, no heart was found among the entrails; and that you were answered by the soothsayer Spurinna that this sign pertained to your life and your counsel, because both of these are contained in the heart. Then there broke out the parricide of those who, while they wished to remove you from the number of men, added you to the council of the gods.

6e.1. Let the domestic account of such portents be closed with this example, lest, if I take up more of the Roman, I should seem to have transferred from the heavenly temple to private houses uses not befitting. I shall therefore touch upon foreign instances, which, as they have less authority for being inserted into Latin literature, so they may bring some agreeable variety. In the army of Xerxes, which he had assembled against the province of Greece, it is established that a hare was brought forth by the birth of a mare. By this kind of portent the outcome of so great a preparation was signified: for he who [had covered] the sea with fleets, the land with infantry, . . . even a timorous animal, was compelled by a fearful retreat to seek again his own kingdom. To the same Xerxes, who had with difficulty at last crossed Mount Athos, before he destroyed Athens, while he was contemplating the plan of invading Sparta, a remarkable prodigy occurred during dinner: for the wine poured into his bowl was turned into blood, and that not once but a second and a third time. Consulted about this, the magi warned that he should abstain from his undertaken plan: and if there had been any trace of sense in his foolish breast, . . . he had been abundantly warned beforehand concerning Leonidas and the Spartans.

6e.2. To Midas, indeed, under whose rule Phrygia was subject, ants heaped grains of wheat into his mouth as he slept, when a boy. When his parents thereafter inquired whither the prodigy tended, the augurs answered that he would be the richest of all mortals. Nor did the prediction prove vain: for Midas surpassed the wealth of almost all kings in the abundance of his money, and made up for the cradle of his infancy, endowed with the cheap gift of the gods, by treasures laden with gold and silver.

6e.3. To the ants of Midas I should by right and merit prefer the bees of Plato: for those were indices of a fleeting and frail felicity, these of a solid and eternal one, inserting honey on the lips of the little child as he slept in his cradle. When this was heard, the interpreters of prodigies said that a singular sweetness of speech would flow from his mouth. And to me, indeed, those bees seem to have fed, at the instigation of the goddesses, not on Mount Hymettus fragrant with the flower of thyme, but on the Heliconian hills of the Muses, green with every kind of learning, and to have instilled into a most great genius the sweetest nourishment of the highest eloquence.

7.1. ON DREAMS. But since I have touched on the rich dream of Midas and the eloquent dream of Plato, I shall relate by how sure images the slumber of many has been foreshadowed. And from what point should I rather begin this subject than from the most sacred memory of the divine Augustus? When his physician Artorius was taking sleep on the night which the day followed on which the Roman armies clashed against each other in the plains of Philippi, an apparition of Minerva arose and bade him warn Augustus, who was entangled in a grave illness, not to absent himself from the next battle on account of his bad health. When Caesar had heard this, he ordered himself to be carried into the line on a litter. And while there, beyond the strength of his body, he kept watch for the winning of the victory, his camp was captured by Brutus. What else, then, are we to think but that it was brought about by divine power that the head already destined for immortality should not feel the violence of a fortune unworthy of its heavenly spirit?

7.2. Augustus, indeed, beyond the natural vigour of his mind in perceiving all things keenly, was admonished also by a recent and domestic example to obey the dream of Artorius: for he had heard that Calpurnia, the wife of the divine Julius his father, on the night which he last passed on earth, had seen in her sleep him lying in her lap pierced with many wounds, and, violently terrified by the dreadfulness of the dream, had not ceased to beg that on the next day he abstain from the senate-house. But he, lest he should be thought to have done it moved by a woman's dream, insisted on holding the senate, in which the hands of the parricides were laid upon him. It is not [fitting] to make a comparison between father and son in any matter, especially when joined by the height of divinity; but the one had already by his works built himself an approach to heaven, while for the other a long round of earthly virtues still remained. Wherefore the immortal gods willed that by the one only the impending change of his condition should be recognized, while by the other it should even be postponed, so that one glory might be given to heaven and another promised.

7.3. That dream too is of great wonder and of a clear outcome which on the same night the two consuls P. Decius Mus and T. Manlius Torquatus saw, when their camp was pitched in the Latin War, grave and dangerous, not far from the foot of Mount Vesuvius: for to each of them a certain apparition foretold in his sleep that from one army the commander, from the other the army, was owed to the gods of the dead and to Mother Earth; and that, whichever commander had devoted to death the forces of the enemy and himself above them, his side would depart victorious. This, on the next dawn, agreed with the entrails of the victims, which the consuls were about either to expiate, if it could be averted, or to carry out, if it should be deemed certain even by the warning of the gods; and it was agreed between them that, whichever of them should first begin to be hard pressed on his wing, he should atone for the fates of the fatherland with his own life. Of this neither shrank, and the fates demanded Decius.

7.4. There follows a dream equally pertaining to public religion. When at certain plebeian games a head of a household, before the procession was brought in, had driven through the Flaminian circus his slave, beaten with stripes, under a yoke to punishment, Jupiter in his sleep bade T. Latinius, a man of the people, tell the consuls that the leading dancer at the next circus games had not pleased him: and that, unless this matter were expiated by a careful repetition of the games, no slight danger to the city would follow. He, fearing lest he should entangle the supreme authority in some inconvenience to himself by a religious scruple, kept silence, and at once his son, seized by a sudden violence of disease, perished. He himself too, asked in his sleep by the same god whether he had paid a sufficiently great penalty for neglecting his command, persisting in his resolve, was loosed in the strength of his body; and only then, by the counsel of his friends, carried on a little litter to the tribunal of the consuls and thence to the senate, having set forth in order the whole of his misfortune, to the great wonder of all recovered the firmness of his limbs and returned home on foot.

7.5. Nor is this either to be wrapped in silence. M. Cicero, driven from the city by the conspiracy of his enemies, when he was staying in a certain villa of the field of Atina, his mind sunk in sleep, while he wandered through deserted places and pathless regions, thought that C. Marius, adorned with the insignia of the consulship, met him and asked him why he was being carried with so sad a countenance on an uncertain journey. Then, having heard the misfortune with which he was struggling, he seized his right hand and handed him over to the nearest lictor to be led to his own monument, saying that there was laid up for him there the hope of a happier state. Nor did it turn out otherwise: for in the temple of Marian Jupiter the decree of the senate concerning his return was made.

7.6. To C. Gracchus, moreover, the dreadfulness of the impending misfortune was announced openly and plainly in his sleep: for, oppressed by slumber, he saw the image of his brother Tiberius saying to him that by no means could he avoid perishing by that same fate by which he himself had fallen. Many heard this from Gracchus before he entered upon the tribunate, in which he met his brother's end. Caelius too, a reliable authority on Roman history, writes that the report of this matter reached his own ears while Gracchus was yet alive.

7.7. The dream which follows surpasses the dire aspect of this one. At Actium, when the resources of M. Antonius had been broken, Cassius of Parma, who had followed his party, fled to Athens. There, while in the dead of night he lay on his little bed, his mind lulled by anxieties and cares, he thought there came to him a man of huge size, of black colour, with a squalid beard and unkempt hair, and that, being asked who he was, he answered, "An evil spirit." Then, terrified by the foul sight and the dreadful name, he called out to his slaves and asked whether they had seen anyone of such appearance either entering or leaving the bedroom. When they affirmed that no one had come there, he gave himself again to rest and sleep, and the same apparition presented itself to his mind. And so, sleep being put to flight, he ordered a light to be brought in and forbade the boys to leave him. Between this night and the capital punishment with which Caesar afflicted him, a very little time intervened.

7.8. Yet on closer lines, so to speak, the dream of Haterius Rufus, a Roman knight, was brought to a sure outcome. He, when a gladiatorial show was being given at Syracuse, in his sleep saw himself stabbed by the hand of a net-fighter, and the next day told it to those sitting beside him at the spectacle. It then happened that, at the place next to the knight, a net-fighter was brought in together with a swordsman. When he had seen his face, he said to the same men that he thought he was being slaughtered by that net-fighter, and at once wished to leave from there. They, having dispelled his fear by their talk, brought the cause of destruction upon the wretched man: for the net-fighter, having driven the swordsman into that very place and cast him down, while trying to strike him as he lay, ran Haterius through with his sword and killed him.

7e.1. Hannibal too had a dream, as detestable to Roman blood as it was of sure prediction, whose not only waking hours but even sleep itself was hostile to our empire: for he drank in an image agreeing with his purpose and his wishes, and thought that there was sent to him from Jupiter a young man, in mortal shape but loftier than mortal, as a guide for the invasion of Italy. At his bidding he followed at first with his eyes turned to no side, but soon, by the forward inclination of human nature to scrutinize forbidden things, looking back behind him, he noticed a serpent of immense size, sweeping away with violent onset everything whatever lay in its path, and behind it, with a great crash of the sky, bursting clouds and a light wrapped in murky darkness. Then, astonished, he asked what that monster might be and what it portended. "You see," said the guide, "the devastation of Italy: therefore be silent, and leave the rest to the fates in silence."

7e.2. How well had Alexander, king of Macedon, been forewarned by an image seen in his sleep to be a more diligent guardian of his life, if fortune had been willing to furnish him also with the counsel of guarding against the danger: for he knew the deadly right hand of Cassander from a dream before he felt it in the event; for he thought that he was being slain by him, although he had never seen him. Then, after an interval of time, when Cassander came into his sight, and the image of his nocturnal fear was revealed, when he recognized him to be the son of Antipater, adding a Greek verse which makes light of the credit of dreams, he drove from his mind the suspicion of the poison already prepared against his life, by which he is believed to have perished at the hand of Cassander.

7e.3. Far more indulgent were the gods toward the poet Simonides, whose salutary admonition in his sleep they strengthened by the firmness of his resolve: for when he had put his ship in to shore and had committed to burial a body lying unburied, and was warned by it not to sail on the next day, he remained on land. Those who had set out from there were overwhelmed by waves and storms in his sight: he himself rejoiced that he had preferred to entrust his life to a dream rather than to a ship. And, mindful of the benefit, he consecrated [the man] to eternity in a most elegant poem, setting up for him a better and more lasting sepulchre in the minds of men than he had built in the deserted and unknown sands.

7e.4. Effective too was that image of sleep which afflicted the mind of King Croesus first with the greatest fear, then also with grief: for he thought that Atys, the more excellent of his two sons in agility of mind and gifts of body, and destined for the succession to the kingdom, had been snatched from him by the sword. And so whatever pertained to avoiding the bitterness of the announced disaster, his fatherly care did not in any part cease to attend to. The young man had been accustomed to be sent to wage wars; he was kept at home. He had an armoury filled with an abundance of weapons of every kind; this too he ordered to be removed. He used to have companions girded with swords; they were forbidden to come near. Yet necessity gave an entrance for grief: for when a boar of huge size was laying waste, with frequent slaughter of the country folk, the cultivated lands of Mount Olympus, and royal aid was implored against the unwonted evil, the son wrung from his father that he should be sent to crush it, the more easily indeed because it was not the savagery of a tusk but of iron that was held in dread. But while all were intent with eager zeal upon killing the beast, persistent chance, by the violence of the impending peril, turned aside upon him a lance hurled for the sake of attacking the wild creature; and it willed that that right hand above all should be sprinkled with the crime of a wicked slaughter, to which the protection of the son had been entrusted by the father, and which Croesus, defiled by the blood of an unintended homicide, fearing the gods of hospitality, had expiated as a suppliant by sacrifice.

7e.5. Nor is Cyrus a lesser proof of the unconquered necessity of the fates. His maternal grandfather Astyages, when Cyrus's birth pointed toward the empire of all Asia, vainly tried to dispel two heralds of a dream, by giving his daughter Mandane in marriage—because in his sleep he had seen her urine flood all the nations of Asia—not to the most excellent of the Medes, lest the honour of the kingdom be transferred into his family, but to a man of Persia of moderate fortune; and by ordering the newborn Cyrus to be exposed, because in like manner, in his hours of sleep, he had thought that a vine, sprung from the genital part of Mandane, had grown so far as to overshadow all the regions of his dominion: for he frustrated himself, by trying with human counsels to hinder the felicity of his grandson, destined by the judgement of the gods.

7e.6. While Dionysius of Syracuse was still keeping himself within a private station, a certain woman of Himera, of no obscure family, in her sleep, as it seemed to her, ascended to heaven, and there, having surveyed the seats of all the gods, noticed a powerful man, of fair colour, with a freckled face, bound with iron chains, set beneath the throne and feet of Jupiter; and when she asked the young man whom she had used as a guide in viewing heaven who he was, she heard that he was the dire fate of Sicily and Italy, and that, loosed from his bonds, he would be the destruction of many cities. This dream she made public the next day in conversation. When afterwards a fortune hostile to the liberty of Syracuse and dangerous to the lives of the innocent had cast Dionysius, from heavenly custody, like a thunderbolt, upon their ease and tranquillity, as she saw him entering the walls of Himera amid the crowd that had poured out to do him homage and to gaze upon him, she cried out that this was the man she had seen in her sleep. This, made known to the tyrant, gave him cause to remove the woman.

7e.7. Of a safer dream was the mother of the same Dionysius. She, when she carried him conceived in her womb, seemed to give birth to a little Satyr, and, on consulting an interpreter of prodigies, learned, with a sure outcome, that he would be the most illustrious and most powerful of Greek blood.

7e.8. But Hamilcar, the general of the Carthaginians, when he was besieging Syracuse, believed that in his sleep he heard a voice announcing that on the next day he would dine in that city. Joyful therefore, as if victory had been promised him by divine power, he was preparing his army for battle. In which, a quarrel having arisen between the Sicilians and the Carthaginians, his camp was overwhelmed by a sudden onset of the Syracusans, and they dragged him in chains within their own walls. Thus, deceived more by hope than by the dream, he dined at Syracuse a captive, not, as he had presumed in his mind, a victor.

7e.9. Alcibiades too foresaw his wretched end by a not deceptive nocturnal image: for with whatever cloak of his mistress he had seen himself covered while sleeping, with that, slain and lying unburied, he was covered.

7e.10. The next dream, although it is a little longer, yet, on account of its excessive clearness, prevails not to be omitted. Two intimate friends, Arcadians, making a journey together, came to Megara, of whom the one betook himself to a guest-friend, the other turned aside to an inn for hire. He who was in his friend's lodging saw in his sleep his companion begging him to come to his aid, since he had been entrapped by the treachery of the innkeeper: for he could be snatched from the impending peril by his speedy approach. Roused by this vision, he leaped up and tried to make for the inn in which the other was lodging. Then, by a baleful fate, he condemned his most humane purpose as superfluous and went back to bed and sleep. Then the same man, wounded, presented himself to him and begged that, since he had neglected to bring help to his life, he would at least not deny vengeance for his death: for his body, slaughtered by the innkeeper, was at that very moment being carried to the gate in a cart, covered over with dung. Compelled by the so persistent prayers of his friend, he ran at once to the gate, and seized the cart which had been pointed out to him in his sleep, and brought the innkeeper to capital punishment.

8.pr. ON MARVELS. Many things too have happened by day and to those awake, just as if wrapped in the cloud of darkness and sleep. These, because it is hard to discern whence they have flowed or by what reason they have come to be, may deservedly be called marvels. Of these, out of a great heap, this one occurs first.

8.1. When at Lake Regillus the dictator A. Postumius and Mamilius Octavius, leader of the Tusculans, were clashing with each other with great forces, and neither line for some time gave ground, Castor and Pollux, champions of the Roman side, appearing, utterly routed the enemy's forces. Likewise, in the Macedonian War, P. Vatinius, a man of the prefecture of Reate, making for the city by night, thought that two young men of surpassing beauty, riding on white horses, met him and announced that on the day that had just passed King Perseus had been captured by Paulus. When he had reported this to the senate, as a despiser of its majesty and greatness by an idle tale, he was cast into prison; but afterwards, when by Paulus's letter it appeared that Perseus had been captured on that day, he was both freed from custody and, besides, presented with land and exemption from service. That Castor and Pollux, even at that time, kept watch on behalf of the empire of the Roman people, was made known by the fact that they were seen washing off their own sweat and that of their horses at the lake of Juturna, and the temple of theirs joined to the spring stood open, unbarred by the hand of any man.

8.2. But that we may pursue the favourable divine power of the other gods too toward this city: when our state had been afflicted by pestilence for three years on end, and saw that an end to so great and so long-lasting an evil could be imposed neither by divine mercy nor by human aid, by the care of the priests, on consulting the Sibylline books, it perceived that the former health could not be recovered otherwise than if Aesculapius were summoned from Epidaurus. And so, having sent envoys thither, it believed that, by its own authority, which was already in the world most ample, it would obtain the sole help of the fated remedy. Nor did its opinion deceive it: for with equal zeal the protection was sought and promised, and straightway the Romans' envoys were led into the temple of Aesculapius, which is five miles distant from their city, of Epidaurus, and most kindly invited to take, as of their own right, whatever they thought they would carry as health-giving to their country. The divine power of the god himself followed their so prompt indulgence and confirmed the words of mortals with heavenly compliance: for that serpent, which the Epidaurians had venerated, rarely seen but never without great benefit to themselves, in the likeness of Aesculapius, began to glide through the most frequented parts of the city with gentle eyes and a soft motion, and, beheld for three days amid the religious wonder of all, plainly bearing on its face the eagerness of one seeking a more illustrious seat, made its way to the Roman trireme; and, while the sailors were frightened by the unaccustomed sight, it climbed aboard to where the tent of the envoy Q. Ogulnius was, and coiled itself in a manifold circle into deepest quiet. Then the envoys, as if having attained the object of their wishes, when their thanksgiving was completed and the worship of the serpent had been received from those skilled in it, joyfully set sail thence; and, having accomplished a prosperous voyage, after they had put in at Antium, the serpent, which had remained everywhere on the vessel, gliding out, wound itself around a palm of lofty height overhanging in the forecourt of the temple of Aesculapius a myrtle spread with thick branches; and for three days, with the food on which it was wont to feed set out, not without great fear on the part of the envoys lest it should be unwilling to return thence to the trireme, having made use of the hospitality of the temple at Antium, it gave itself back to be conveyed to our city; and when the envoys had gone out onto the bank of the Tiber, it swam across to the island where the temple is dedicated, and by its arrival dispelled the pestilence, as a remedy for which it had been sought.

8.3. No less voluntary was the passage of Juno into our city. When Veii had been captured by Furius Camillus, the soldiers, by order of their general, about to transfer into the city the image of Juno Moneta, which there was worshipped with especial religion, were trying to move it from its place. When the goddess was asked in jest by one of them whether she wished to migrate to Rome, she answered that she did. On hearing this voice, the jest turned to wonder, and now believing that they were carrying not the image but Juno herself, sought from heaven, they joyfully set her up on that part of the Aventine mount where now we behold her temple.

8.4. The image of Womanly Fortune too, which is on the Latin way at the fourth milestone, consecrated at that time with its temple when the prayers of his mother turned Coriolanus back from the destruction of his native city, it is established spoke, not once but twice, formerly with these words: "Duly, matrons, have you given me, and duly have you dedicated me."

8.5. But under the consul Valerius Publicola, who, after the kings had been driven out, waged war with the Veientines and Etruscans—while the latter desired to restore to Tarquinius his former power, and the Romans to retain the liberty newly won—when the Etruscans and Tarquinius had got the upper hand in the battle on the right wing, so great a terror suddenly came upon them that not only did the victors themselves flee, but they even dragged with them the Veientines, partners of their panic. As a proof of this matter a marvel is added: a sudden mighty voice from the neighbouring wood of Arsia, which is reported to have been sent forth by the mouth of Silvanus almost in this manner: "By one more shall the Tuscans fall; the Roman army shall depart victorious." The corpses, counted by number, showed the wonderful truth of the saying.

8.6. What? Is not the aid of Mars, by which he helped the victory of the Romans, to be celebrated in memory? When the Bruttii and Lucani, roused by most furious hatred and with the greatest forces, were seeking the destruction of the city of Thurii, and the consul C. Fabricius Luscinus with especial zeal was protecting its safety, and the matter, with doubtful outcome, was being carried on with the forces of both sides brought together into one place, when the Romans did not dare to enter battle, a young man of remarkable size first began to exhort them to take up courage. Then, when he noticed that they were rather slow, having snatched up ladders, he passed through the midst of the enemy's line to the opposing camp, and, applying them, mounted the rampart. Thence, crying out with a mighty voice that the step toward victory had been made, he drew both our men to the capturing of the enemy's camp and the Lucanians and Bruttii to the defence of their own, where, crowded together, they were being worn down in a doubtful struggle. But the same man, by the impulse of his own arms, handed over the prostrate enemy to the Romans to be slaughtered and captured: for twenty thousand were slain, five thousand together with Statius Statilius, the leader of both nations, and three-and-twenty military standards were taken. On the next day, when the consul, among those to be honoured, whose strenuous service he had used, said that he was reserving a rampart-crown for the man by whom the camp had been stormed, and no one could be found who claimed that reward, it was alike recognized and believed that Mars the father had then been present to his own people. Among the other manifest signs of this matter, a helmet distinguished by two plumes, with which the heavenly head had been covered, furnished proof. And so by the edict of Fabricius a thanksgiving was held to Mars, and by the laureled soldiers, with great gladness of heart, testimony was rendered to him of the aid offered.

8.7. I shall now relate what, recognized in its own age, has flowed down to posterity: that Aeneas, having conveyed the household gods from Troy, placed them at Lavinium; that thence, transferred by his son Ascanius to Alba, which he himself had founded, they sought again their former shrine; and that, because this could be thought to have been done by human hand, when brought back to Alba they signified their will by a second passage. Nor does it escape me in how uncertain an opinion the estimate is held concerning the motion and voice of the immortal gods perceived by human eyes and ears; but because no new things are said, but things handed down are repeated, let the authorities vouch for their credit: it is for us not to have shrunk from things consecrated by the renowned monuments of letters, as if true.

8.8. Mention having been made of the city from which our state drew its origins, the divine Julius, the fortunate offspring of it, offers himself to us. Him C. Cassius, never to be named without a preface of public parricide, when at the battle of Philippi he was standing firm with most ardent spirit, saw, more august than human in appearance, clad in a purple cloak, with menacing countenance and on a galloping horse making an attack upon him. Terrified by this sight, he turned his back to the enemy, having first uttered these words: "For what more can I do, if to have slain him is not enough?" You had not indeed slain Caesar, Cassius, for no divinity can be extinguished; but by violating him while he still used a mortal body you deserved to have so hostile a god.

8.9. Now as for the fact that L. Lentulus, sailing past the shore on which the body of Cn. Pompey the Great, slain by the treachery of King Ptolemy, was being burned on the wood of a shattered boat, ignorant of his misfortune, when he had seen a pyre at which Fortune herself ought to have blushed, said to his comrades, "How do we know but that by this flame Cn. Pompey is being cremated?"—it is the marvel of a divinely sent voice.

8.10. And this indeed was a matter of a man and of chance, while that other was uttered well-nigh by the very mouth of Apollo, by which the truth-telling fidelity of the Pythian prophecy ran ahead of the death of Appius. In the civil war, in which Cn. Pompey had broken himself away from concord with Caesar by a counsel ruinous to himself and useless to the state, Appius, desiring to explore the outcome of that gravest of disturbances, by the strength of his command—for he was in charge of Achaea—compelled the priestess of the Delphic cauldron to descend into the inmost part of the sacred cavern, whence, as sure lots are sought by those consulting, so the too great draught of the divine breath proves baleful to those who render them. Therefore, by the impulse of the divine power that seized her, the inspired maiden, with the dread sound of her voice, sang the fates to Appius amid obscure ambiguities of words: "This war," she said, "is nothing to you, Roman: you shall obtain the Hollows of Euboea." But he, thinking that he was being warned by the counsels of Apollo not to be present at that crisis, withdrew into that region which, lying between Rhamnus, a noble part of the Attic soil, and Carystus, near to the Chalcidic strait, holds the name of the Hollows of Euboea, where, before the battle of Pharsalus, consumed by disease, he took possession by burial of the place foretold by the god.

8.11. There are also those things that hold the place of marvels: that, when the chapel of the Salii was burned down, nothing was found whole in it except the lituus of Romulus; that the statue of Servius Tullius, when the temple of Fortune was consumed by fire, remained inviolate; that the statue of Quinta Claudia, set in the forecourt of the temple of the Mother of the gods, when that temple was twice consumed by fire—first in the consulship of P. Nasica Scipio and L. Bestia, again in that of M. Servilius and L. Lamia—stood untouched by the flames upon its base.

8.12. Some wonder the pyre of Acilius Aviola too brought to our state, who, believed dead both by the physicians and by his household, when he had lain for some time at home, was carried out; and after the fire had seized his body, he cried out that he was alive and called upon the help of his tutor—for he alone had remained there—but, already surrounded by the flames, he could not be withdrawn from his fate. It is established that L. Lamia too, a man of praetorian rank, likewise had a voice upon the pyre.

8e.1. Less marvellous than these is the case of Er the Pamphylian, whom Plato writes lay for ten days among those who had fallen in battle, and, two days after he had been taken up thence and placed on the pyre, came back to life, and told of certain wondrous things seen at the time of his death.

8e.2. And since we have crossed over to foreign matters: a certain very learned man at Athens, when he had received the blow of a stone on his head, retaining everything else with the most tenacious memory, forgot only letters, to which he had especially devoted himself. The dire and malignant wound erupted into his mind, as if of set purpose, after the senses had been searched out, upon that very thing above all in which he most rejoiced, with the bitterness of harming, bearing the man's singular learning out to its grave with a funeral full of envy. If it was not permitted him to enjoy such studies, it had at some time been more useful never to have obtained access to them than, having once tasted their sweetness, to have been deprived of it.

8e.3. Yet more pitiable is the account of the following case: for the wife of Nausimenes the Athenian, when she had come upon the incest of her son and daughter, struck by the sight of the unexpected monstrosity, was struck dumb, both for the present time to express indignation and for the future to speak. They paid for the wicked coupling by a voluntary death.

8e.4. In this manner fortune, raging, took away a voice; in that other, propitious, she gave one. Echecles of Samos, an athlete, dumb, when the title and prize of the victory he had won were being snatched from him, kindled with indignation, came forth vocal.

8e.5. Of Gorgias of Epirus too, a brave and famous man, the origin was marvellous, in that, at the funeral of his mother, having slipped from her womb, by his unexpected wailing he forced those carrying the bier to halt, and offered his country a strange spectacle, having all but obtained light and a cradle from the very pyre of his mother: for at the same moment of time the one, already dead, gave birth, and the other was carried out before he was born.

8e.6. A wound of divine fortune inflicted on Jason of Pherae . . . one desirous of his destruction inflicted: for when amid an ambush he had struck him with a sword, he so burst an abscess, which had been able to be healed by none of the physicians, that he freed the man from his deadly malady.

8e.7. Equally acceptable to the immortal gods was Simonides, whose safety, preserved from an impending [duty], was also withdrawn from ruin: for as he was dining at the house of Scopas at Crannon, which is a town in Thessaly, it was announced that two young men had come to the door, earnestly begging that he would come out to them at once. Going out to them, he found no one there. But at that moment of time the dining-room, in which Scopas was feasting, collapsed and crushed both him and all the guests. What is richer than this good fortune, which neither sea nor land raging availed to extinguish!

8e.8. Not unwillingly I append to this man Daphnitas, lest anyone be ignorant how much it has mattered to have sung the praises of the gods and to have disparaged the divine power. He, since he was of that pursuit whose professors are called sophists, of a foolish and biting cast of opinion, consulted Apollo at Delphi, by way of mockery, whether he could find a horse, although he had none at all. From the oracle a voice was rendered to him: that he would find a horse, but that, driven off by it, he would perish. Whence, as he was returning in jesting mood, as though the credit of the sacred lots had been deluded, he fell in with King Attalus, often provoked by him with insulting words in his absence; and by his order he was thrown headlong from a rock whose name was Horse, and so paid the just penalties of his mad spirit, even to the mocking of the gods.

8e.9. By the same oracle Philip, king of the Macedonians, was warned to guard his safety from the violence of a four-horse chariot, and ordered chariots throughout his whole kingdom to be unyoked, and always avoided that place in Boeotia which is called Quadriga. Yet he did not escape the kind of danger announced: for Pausanias had a four-horse chariot engraved on the hilt of the sword with which he slew him.

8e.10. This same so persistent necessity appeared alike in the father and in the son Alexander: since Callanus the Indian, about to cast himself of his own will upon a blazing pyre, when interrupted by Alexander, who asked whether he wished to charge him with anything or to say anything, said, "Soon I shall see you": nor that without cause, since his voluntary departure from life was followed by the swift death of Alexander.

8e.11. The case of a rower equals royal deaths in the greatness of the marvel; for when, on a Tyrian hexere, he was baling out the bilge-water, and a wave had cast him from the ship, an opposing wave, rebounding from the other side, carried him back into the ship. And so to the lamentation of one at once wretched and fortunate was mingled congratulation.

8e.12. What? Are not those mockeries of nature in human bodies to be believed to have existed—tolerable indeed, because they lacked savagery, but yet themselves to be reckoned among marvels? For the son of Prusias, king of Bithynia, by the same name as his father, had, in place of the upper row of teeth, one bone extended evenly, neither in appearance unsightly nor in any way inconvenient for use.

8e.13. But Drypetina, the daughter of King Mithridates, born of Queen Laodice, exceedingly deformed by a double row of teeth, was a companion of her father's flight when he was conquered by Pompey.

8e.14. Nor of small wonder either are the eyes of Strabo, who, it is established, used so sure a keenness of sight that from Lilybaeum he could behold the fleets going out of the harbour of the Carthaginians.

8e.15. More marvellous than his eyes was the heart of Aristomenes of Messene, which the Athenians, on account of his extraordinary cunning, cut out and found stuffed with hairs, when, having several times taken him captive and seen him slip away by craft, they had captured him.

8e.16. And the poet Antipater of Sidon was every year, on one day only, that on which he had been born, seized with a fever; and when he had reached extreme old age, on his birthday, by that fixed recurrence of the malady, he was consumed.

8e.17. In this place are aptly mentioned Polystratus and Hippoclides, philosophers, born on the same day, followers of the sect of the same teacher Epicurus, joined also by community in possessing a patrimony and keeping a school, and extinguished at the same moment of time in extreme old age. So great and so equal a fellowship of fortune alike and of friendship, who would not think to have been born, nurtured, and ended in the very bosom of heavenly Concord herself?

8e.18. Wherefore these things especially—whether in the children of most powerful kings, or in a most illustrious king, or in a poet of flourishing genius, or in most learned men, or in a man of unknown lot . . . —not even she herself, the fruitful artificer of all good and bad material, would render a reason for: no more than why she so greatly loved the wild she-goats born in Crete, which, when pierced through with arrows, she leads, all but with her own hands, to the saving help of the herb dittany, and brings it about that, when it has been eaten, they straightway spew forth from their wounds both the darts and the force of the poison; or why, on the island of Cephalania, although all flocks everywhere are daily refreshed by drinking water, she established that goats, for the greater part of the year, with open mouth, receiving the winds from on high, should slake their thirst; or wherefore at Croton, in the temple of Juno Lacinia, she has endowed an altar with ash that is unmoved by all the winds; or above all why she has willed that one water in Macedonia, and another in the territory of Cales, should possess the property of wine, by which men become intoxicated. These things we ought to follow up not with wonder but with mere record, since we know that licence is rightly claimed in the greatest measure by her in whose power rests the boundless labour of begetting all things.

8e.19. And because we have touched on things exceeding the usual order of reason, let mention be made also of the serpent related by T. Livy at once carefully and eloquently: for he says that in Africa, by the river Bagrada, . . . there was one of so great a size that it kept the army of Atilius Regulus from the use of the river, and, when many soldiers had been seized in its huge mouth and several crushed by the coils of its tail, since it could not be pierced by the casting of weapons, at last, attacked on all sides by the engines of ballistae, it sank down beneath the frequent and heavy blows of flints, and seemed to all the cohorts and legions more terrible than Carthage itself; and moreover, when the eddies had been steeped with its gore and the neighbouring region polluted by the deadly exhalation of its lying body, it drove the Roman camp away from there. He adds that the skin of the beast, a hundred and twenty feet long, was sent to the city.