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"And you have even collected the portent-stories
connected with Flaminius:1 'His horse,' you say,
'stumbled and fell with him.' That is very strange,
isn't it? And, 'The standard of the first company
could not be pulled up.' Perhaps the standard bearer had planted it stoutly and pulled it up timidly.
What is astonishing in the fact that the horse of
Dionysius2 came up out of the river, or that it had
bees in its mane? And yet, because Dionysius
began to reign a short time later—which was a mere
coincidence—the event referred to is considered a
portent! 'The arms sounded,' you say, 'in the
temple of Hercules in Sparta; the folding-doors
of the same god at Thebes, though securely barred,
opened of their own accord, and the shields hanging
upon the walls of that temple fell to the ground.'3
Now since none of these things could have happened
without some exterior force, why should we say that
they were brought about by divine agency rather
than by chance?
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