[124]
However, the following utterance1 of that philosopher,
made after he had been wickedly condemned to
death, is a noble one—I might almost call it' divine ':
'I am very content to die,' he said; 'for neither
when I left my home nor when I mounted the platform to plead my cause, did the god give any sign,
and this he always does when some evil threatens
me.
55. "And so my opinion is that the power of
divination exists, notwithstanding the fact that those
who prophesy by means of art and conjecture
are oftentimes mistaken. I believe that, just as
men may make mistakes in other callings, so they
may in this. It may happen that a sign of doubtful
meaning is assumed to be certain or, possibly, either
a sign was itself unobserved or one that annulled
an observed sign may have gone unnoticed. But,
in order to establish the proposition for which I
contend it is enough for me to find, not many,
but even a few instances of divinely inspired prevision and prophecy.
1 Cf. Plato, Apol. ch. 31.
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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