[85]
The truth is that no other argument of any
sort is advanced to show the futility of the various
kinds of divination which I have mentioned except
the fact that it is difficult to give the cause or reason
of every kind of divination. You ask, 'Why is it
that the soothsayer, when he finds a cleft in the
lung of the victim, even though the other vitals are
sound, stops the execution of an undertaking and
defers it to another day?' 'Why does an augur
think it a favourable omen when a raven flies to
the right, or a crow to the left?' 'Why does an
astrologer consider that the moon's conjunction with
the planets Jupiter and Venus at the birth of children
is a favourable omen, and its conjunction with Saturn
or Mars unfavourable?' Again, 'Why does God
warn us when we are asleep and fail to do so when
we are awake?' Finally, 'Why is it that mad
Cassandra foresees coming events and wise Priam
cannot do the same?'
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.