20. "Oh! but you say, 'the head was found in the Tiber.'1 As if I contended that your soothsayers were devoid of art! My contention is that there is no divination. By dividing the heavens in the manner already indicated2 and by noting what happened in each division the soothsayers learn whence the thunderbolt comes and whither it goes, [p. 421] but no method can show that the thunderbolt has any prophetic value. However, you array those verses of mine against me:
For high-thundering Jove, as he stood on starry Olympus,
Hurtled his blows at the temples and monuments raised in his honour,
And on the Capitol's site unloosed the bolts of his lightning.
'Then,' the poem goes on to say, 'the statue of Natta, the images of the gods and the piece representing Romulus and Remus, with their wolf-nurse, were struck by a thunderbolt and fell to the ground. The prophecies made by the soothsayers from these events were fulfilled to the letter.'
