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[34] 18. "I agree, therefore, with those who have said that there are two kinds of divination: one, which is allied with art; the other, which is devoid of art. Those diviners employ art, who, having learned the known by observation, seek the unknown by deduction. On the other hand those do without art who, unaided by reason or deduction or by signs which have been observed and recorded, forecast the future while under the influence of mental excitement, or of some free and unrestrained emotion. This condition often occurs to men while dreaming and sometimes to persons who prophesy while in a frenzy—like Bacis of Boeotia, Epimenides of Crete and the Sibyl of Erythraea.1 In this latter class must be placed oracles—not oracles given by means of' equalized lots'2 —but those uttered under the impulse of divine inspiration; although divination by lot is not in itself to be despised, if it has the sanction of antiquity, as in the case of those lots which, according to tradition, sprang out of the [p. 265] earth3 ; for in spite of everything, I am inclined to think that they may, under the power of God, be so drawn as to give an appropriate response. Men capable of correctly interpreting all these signs of the future seem to approach very near to the divine spirit of the gods whose wills they interpret, just as scholars4 do when they interpret the poets.

1 This Sibyl was Herophile, who finally went to Cumae.

2 What is meant by aequatis sortibus is not known.

3 These were small oak tablets which were in the temple of Fortuna at Praeneste (ii. 41. 86), and had words engraved on them.

4 Cf. Plato, Ion 533 seq. where the rhapsodist Ion claims a θεία δύναμις in interpreting Homer.

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load focus Introduction (William Armistead Falconer, 1923)
load focus Latin (C. F. W. Müller, 1915)
load focus Latin (William Armistead Falconer, 1923)
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