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[36] Why, then, when here recently a mule (which is an animal ordinarily sterile by nature) brought forth a foal,1 need anyone have scoffed because the soothsayers from that occurrence prophesied a progeny of countless evils to the state?

"What, pray, do you say of that well-known incident of Tiberius Gracchus, the son of Publius? He was censor and consul twice; besides that he was a most competent augur, a wise man and a preeminent citizen. Yet he, according to the account left us by his son Gaius, having caught two snakes in his home, called in the soothsayers to consult [p. 267] them. They advised him that if he let the male snake go his wife must die in a short time; and if he released the female snake his own death must soon occur. Thinking it more fitting that a speedy death should overtake him rather than his young wife, who was the daughter of Publius Africanus, he released the female snake and died within a few days. 19. Let us laugh at the soothsayers, brand them as frauds and impostors and scorn their calling, even though a very wise man, Tiberius Gracchus, and the results and circumstances of his death have given proof of its trustworthiness; let us scorn the Babylonians, too, and those astrologers who, from the top of Mount Caucasus, observe the celestial signs and with the aid of mathematics follow the courses of the stars; let us, I say, convict of folly, falsehood, and shamelessness the men whose records, as they themselves assert, cover a period of four hundred and seventy thousand years;2 and let us pronounce them liars, utterly indifferent to the opinion of succeeding generations.

1 For another instance see Herod. iii. 151–153.

2 Cf. Diodorus Sic. Bibl. ii. p. 118 (473,000); Lac tantius, Div. Inst. vii. ch. 14. But see Pliny, H.N. vii. 56.

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load focus Latin (William Armistead Falconer, 1923)
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