[5]
3. Now my opinion is that, in sanctioning
such usages, the ancients were influenced more
by actual results than convinced by reason.1 However certain very subtle arguments to prove the
trustworthiness of divination have been gathered
by philosophers. Of these—to mention the most
ancient—Xenophanes of Colophon, while asserting
[p. 229]
the existence of gods, was the only one who repudiated divination in its entirety; but all the others,
with the exception of Epicurus, who babbled about
the nature of the gods, approved of divination, though
not in the same degree. For example, Socrates
and all of the Socratic School, and Zeno and his
followers, continued in the faith of the ancient
philosophers and in agreement with the Old Academy
and with the Peripatetics. Their predecessor, Pythagoras, who even wished to be considered an
augur himself, gave the weight of his great name
to the same practice; and that eminent author,
Democritus, in many passages, strongly affirmed his
belief in a presentiment of things to come. Moreover,
Dicaearchus, the Peripatetic, though he accepted
divination by dreams and frenzy, cast away all
other kinds; and my intimate friend, Cratippus,
whom I consider the peer of the greatest of the
Peripatetics, also gave credence to the same kinds of
divination but rejected the rest.
1 Cicero approved of the practice of divination, especially of augury, from reasons of political expediency, not because he thought it had any prophetic value; cf. ii. 33. 70.
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