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[110] 54. "But what weight is to be given to that frenzy of yours, which you term ' divine' and which enables the crazy man to see what the wise man does not see, and invests the man who has lost human intelligence with the intelligence of gods? We Romans venerate the verses of the Sibyl who is said to have uttered them while in a frenzy. Recently there was a rumour, which was believed at the time, but turned out to be false, that one of the interpreters1 of those verses was going to declare in the Senate that, for our safety, the man whom we had as king in fact should be made king also in name. If this is in the books, to what man and to what time does it refer? For it was clever in the author to take care that whatever happened should appear foretold because all reference to persons or time had been [p. 497] omitted.

1 Lucius Cotta, one of the quindecimviri who had charge of the verses. This story is told by Suetonius in his lul. Caesar, ch. 79. It was said that according to the Sibylline verses the Parthians could only be conquered by a king and therefore that Caesar should be called king. Plutarch, Caesar, ch. 60 and 64.

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