"But if you deny the existence of chance and assert that the course of everything present or future has been inevitably determined from all eternity, then you must change your definition of divination, which you said was 'the foreknowledge of things that happen by chance.' For if nothing can happen, nothing befall, nothing come to pass, except what has been determined from all eternity as bound to happen at a fixed time, how can there be such a thing as chance? And if there is no such thing as chance, what room is there for that divination, which you termed 'a foreknowledge of things that happen by chance'? And you were inconsistent enough, too, to say that everything that is or will be is controlled by Fate!Cf. i. 55. 125. Why, the very word ' Fate ' is full of superstition and old women's credulity, and yet the Stoics have much to say of this Fate of yours. A discussion on Fatei.e. in the De fato. is reserved for another occasion; at present I shall speak of it only in so far as it is necessary.