[43]
This was ordained, perhaps, from reasons of political
expediency; for our ancestors wished to have some
excuse for not holding elections sometimes. And
so lightning is an unfavourable sign only in case of
an election; in all other cases we consider it the
best of auspices, if it appears on the left side. But I
shall speak of auspices in another connexion—now
I am going to discuss lightnings.
19. "There is, then, no statement less worthy
[p. 419]
of a natural philosopher than that anything can be
foretold with a certainty by uncertain signs. Of
course I do not think you are credulous enough to
believe that Jove's thunderbolt was made on Mount
Aetna by the Cyclopes.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.