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

[93] 42. "Now, for my part, I believe that the character of the country determined the kind of divination which its inhabitants adopted. For [p. 325] example, the Egyptians and Babylonians, who live on the level surface of open plains, with no hills to obstruct a view of the sky, have devoted their attention wholly to astrology. But the Etruscans, being in their nature of a very ardent religious temperament and accustomed to the frequent sacrifice of victims, have given their chief attention to the study of entrails. And as on account of the density of the atmosphere signs from heaven were common among them, and furthermore since that atmospheric condition caused many phenomena both of earth and sky and also certain prodigies that occur in the conception and birth of men and cattle—for these reasons the Etruscans have become very proficient in the interpretation of portents. Indeed, the inherent force of these means of divination, as you like to observe,¹ is clearly shown by the very words so aptly chosen by our ancestors to describe them. Because they 'make manifest' (ostendunt), 'portend ' (portendunt), ' intimate ' (monstrant),'predict ' (praedicunt),they are called ' manifestations,' ' portents,' ' intimations,' and 'prodigies.'