[19] And the misfortunes which happened at last and were long in their passing—12.
These were foretold by the Father of Gods, in earth and in heaven,
Through unmistakable signs that he gave and often repeated.Now, of those prophecies made when Torquatus and Cotta
1 were consuls,— Made by a Lydian diviner,2 by one of Etruscan extraction—
All, in the round of your crowded twelve months, were brought to fulfilment.
For high-thundering Jove, as he stood on starry Olympus,
Hurled forth his blows at the temples and monuments raised in his honour,
And on the Capitol's site he unloosed the bolts of his lightning.
Then fell the brazen image of Natta, ancient and honoured:
Vanished the tablets of laws long ago divinely enacted;
Wholly destroyed were the statues of gods by the heat of the lightning.
[p. 247]
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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