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

[105] 47. "Why need I speak of augurs? That is your role; the duty to defend auspices, I maintain, is yours. For it was to you, while you were consul, that the augur Appius Claudius declared that because the augury of safety¹ was unpropitious a grievous and violent civil war was at hand. That war began a few months later, but you brought it to an end in still fewer days. Appius is one augur of whom I heartily approve, for not content merely with the sing-song ritual of augury,² he, alone, according to the record of many years, has maintained a real system of divination. I know that your colleagues used to laugh at him and call him at one time ' a Pisidian ' and at another ' a Soran.'³ They did not concede to augury any power of prevision or real knowledge of the future, and used to say that it was a superstitious practice shrewdly invented to gull the ignorant. But the truth is far otherwise, for neither those herdsmen whom Romulus governed, nor Romulus himself, could have had cunning enough to invent miracles with which to mislead the people. It is the trouble and hard work involved in mastering the art that has induced this [p. 339] eloquent contempt; for men prefer to say glibly that there is nothing in auspices rather than to learn what auspices are.