[28]
But, according to
the writings of you augurs, a tripudium results if
any of the food should fall to the ground, and what
I spoke of as a 'forced augury' your fraternity
calls a tripudium solistimum.1 And so through the
indifference of the college, as Cato the Wise laments,
many auguries and auspices have been entirely
abandoned and lost.
16. "In ancient times scarcely any matter out
of the ordinary was undertaken, even in private life,
without first consulting the auspices, clear proof
of which is given even at the present time by our
custom of having ' nuptial auspices,'2 though they
have lost their former religious significance and only
[p. 257]
preserve the name. For just as to-day on important
occasions we make use of entrails in divining—
though even they are employed to a less extent than
formerly—so in the past resort was usually had to
divination by means of birds. And thus it is that by
failing to seek out the unpropitious signs we run
into awful disasters.
1 When the chickens ate so eagerly that some of the food fell to ground and struck it—that was a good omen. See ii. chaps. 34 and 35 where terripudium is explained as =terripavium (from terra and pavire) and solistimum has apparently almost the same meaning. Quintus seems to complain that this was not a true method of divination, as the result was inevitable.
2 Cf. Val. Max. ii. 1; Juv. Sat. x. 336; Suet. Claud. ch. 26.
Cicero: De Senectute De Amicitia De Divinatione. With An English Translation. William Armistead Falconer. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1923.
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