[87]
I have already cited Pythagoras, Democritus, and Socrates and, of the ancients,
I have excluded no one except Xenophanes. To
them I have added the Old Academy, the Peripatetics; and the Stoics. The only dissenter is
Epicurus. But why wonder at that? for is his
opinion of divination any more discreditable than
his view that there is no such thing as a disinterested
virtue?
40. "But is there a man anywhere who is uninfluenced by clear and unimpeachable records
signed and sealed by the hand of Time? For
example, Homer writes that Calchas was by far
the best augur among the Greeks and that he commanded the Greek fleet before Troy. His command
of the fleet I suppose was due to his skill as an augur
and not to his skill in seamanship.
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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