M. Tullius Cicero, Divination, Divination Book I, section 3

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2. Nor is it only one single mode of divination that has been employed in public and in private. For, to say nothing of other nations, how many our own people have embraced! In the first place, according to tradition, Romulus, the father of this City, not only founded it in obedience to the auspices, but was himself a most skilful augur. Next, the other Roman kings employed augurs; and, again, after the expulsion of the kings, no public business was ever transacted at home or abroad without first taking the auspices. Furthermore, since our fore- [p. 227] fathers believed that the soothsayers'¹ art had great efficacy in seeking for omens and advice,² as well as in cases where prodigies were to be interpreted and their effects averted, they gradually introduced that art in its entirety from Etruria, lest it should appear that any kind of divination had been disregarded by them.

1 The haruspex divines by the inspection of entrails.

2 From the gods.

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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Cross-references to this page (13):
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- A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890), AUGUR
- A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890), CUNAE
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- A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890), HI´STRIO
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- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), AMPSANCTI
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), DODO´NA
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M. Tullius Cicero, Divination
William Armistead Falconer, Ed.

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M. Tullius Cicero, Divination William Armistead Falconer, Ed.

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Table of Contents:

M. Tullius Cicero, Divination
William Armistead Falconer, Ed.