M. Tullius Cicero, Divination
William Armistead Falconer, Ed.

[96] 46. "Furthermore, is it not a well-known and undoubted fact that many persons who were born with certain natural defects have been restored completely by Nature herself, after she had resumed her sway, or by surgery or by medicine? For example, some, who were so tongue-tied that they could not speak, have had their tongues set free by a cut from the surgeon's knife. Many more have corrected a natural defect by intelligent exertion. Derosthenes is an instance: according to the account given by Phalereus, he was unable to pronounce the Greek letter rho but by repeated effort learned to articulate it perfectly. But if such defects had been engendered and implanted by a star nothing could have changed them. Do not unlike places produce unlike men? It would be an easy matter to sketch rapidly in passing the differences in mind and body which distinguish the Indians from the Persians and the Ethiopians from the Syrians—differences so striking and so pronounced as to be incredible.