[102]
"Nor is it only to the voices of the gods that the
Pythagoreans have paid regard but also to the
utterances of men which they term 'omens.' Our
ancestors, too, considered such 'omens' worthy of
respect, and for that reason, before entering upon
any business enterprise, used to say, ' May the issue
be prosperous, propitious, lucky, and successful.' At
public celebrations of religious rites they gave the
command, 'Guard your tongues'; and in issuing
the order for the Latin festival the customary injunction was, ' Let the people refrain from strife
[p. 335]
and quarrelling.' So too, when the sacred ceremony
of purification was held by one starting on an
expedition to found a colony, or when the commander-in-chief was reviewing his army, or the censor was
taking his census, it was the rule to choose men
with names of good omen to lead the victims.
Furthermore, the consuls in making a levy of troops
take pains to see that the first soldier enlisted is one
with a lucky name.
Cicero: De Senectute De Amicitia De Divinatione. With An English Translation. William Armistead Falconer. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1923.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
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.