[19]
For you recollect, I suppose, when Cotta and Torquatus were consuls, that many towers in
the Capitol were struck with lightning, when both the images of the immortal gods were moved,
and the statues of many ancient men were thrown down, and the brazen tablets on which the
laws were written were melted. Even Romulus, who built this city, was struck, which, you
recollect, stood in the Capitol, a gilt statue, little and sucking, and clinging to the teats
of the wolf. And when at this time the soothsayers were assembled out of all Etruria, they
said that slaughter, and conflagration, and the overthrow of the laws, and civil and domestic
war, and the fall of the whole city and empire was at hand, unless the immortal gods, being
appeased in every possible manner, by their own power turned aside, as I may say, the very
fates themselves.
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1856.
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