8.
[18]
Although all these things, O Romans, have been so managed by men that they appear to have
been done and provided for by the order and design of the immortal gods; and as we may
conjecture this because the direction of such weighty affairs scarcely appears capable of
having been carried out by human wisdom; so, too, they have at this time so brought us
present aid and assistance, that we could almost behold them without eyes. For to say nothing
of those things, namely, the firebrands seen in the west in the night time, and the heat of
the atmosphere,—to pass over the falling of thunderbolts and the
earthquakes,—to say nothing of all the other portents which have taken place in
such number during my consulship, that the immortal gods themselves have been seeming to
predict what is now taking place; yet, at all events, this which I am about to mention, O
Romans, must be neither passed over nor omitted.
[19]
For you recollect, I suppose, when Cotta and Torquatus were consuls, that many towers in
the Capitol were struck with lightning, when both the images of the immortal gods were moved,
and the statues of many ancient men were thrown down, and the brazen tablets on which the
laws were written were melted. Even Romulus, who built this city, was struck, which, you
recollect, stood in the Capitol, a gilt statue, little and sucking, and clinging to the teats
of the wolf. And when at this time the soothsayers were assembled out of all Etruria, they
said that slaughter, and conflagration, and the overthrow of the laws, and civil and domestic
war, and the fall of the whole city and empire was at hand, unless the immortal gods, being
appeased in every possible manner, by their own power turned aside, as I may say, the very
fates themselves.
[20]
Therefore, according to their answers, games were celebrated for ten days, nor was anything
omitted which might tend to the appeasing of the gods. And they enjoined also that we should
make a greater statue of Jupiter, and place it in a lofty situation, and (contrary to what
had been done before) turn it towards the east. And they said that they hoped that if that
statue which you now behold looked upon the rising of the sun, and the forum, and the
senate-house, that those designs which were secretly formed against the safety of the city
and empire would be brought to light so as to be able to be thoroughly seen by the senate and
by the Roman people. And the consuls ordered it to be so placed; but so great was the delay
in the work, that it was never set up by the former consuls nor by us before this day.
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