[97]
"I now return to instances at home. How many
times the Senate has ordered the decemvirs to
consult the Sibylline books! How often in matters
of grave concern it has obeyed the responses of the
soothsayers! Take the following examples: When
[p. 329]
at one time, two suns and, at another, three moons.
were seen; when meteors appeared; when the sun
shone at night; when rumblings were heard in the
heavens; when the sky seemed to divide, showing
balls of fire1 enclosed within; again, on the occasion
of the landslip in Privernum, report of which was
made to the Senate; and when Apulia was shaken
by a most violent earthquake and the land sank
to an incredible depth—in all these cases of portents which warned the Roman people of mighty
wars and deadly revolutions, the responses of the
soothsayers were in agreement with the Sibylline
verses.
1 The word ignei may have dropped out; cf. Sen. Nat. Quaest. i. 14 “caelum visum discedere cuius hiatu vertices flammae apparuerunt.” Davies suggests ignei animadversi globi.
Cicero: De Senectute De Amicitia De Divinatione. With An English Translation. William Armistead Falconer. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1923.
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