[112]
Perhaps he had
observed, from some special knowledge he had on
the subject, that the crop would be abundant. And,
by the way, he is said to have been the first man
to predict the solar eclipse which took place in the
reign of Astyages.
50. "There are many things foreseen by physicians,
pilots, and also by farmers, but I do not call the predictions of any of them divination. I do not even
call that a case of divination when Anaximander,
the natural philosopher, warned the Spartans to
leave the city and their homes and to sleep in the
fields under arms, because an earthquake was at
hand. Then the whole city fell down in ruins and
the extremity of Mount Taygetus was torn away
like the stern of a ship in a storm. Not even Pherecydes, the famous teacher of Pythagoras, will be
considered a prophet rather than a natural philosopher, because he predicted an earthquake from
the appearance of some water drawn from an
unfailing well.1
1 The appearance of the water indicated the internal disturbance. Cf. Pliny, Hist. Nat. ii. 83.
Cicero: De Senectute De Amicitia De Divinatione. With An English Translation. William Armistead Falconer. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1923.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.