For high-thundering Jove, as he stood on starry Olympus,'Then,' the poem goes on to say, 'the statue of Natta, the images of the gods and the piece representing Romulus and Remus, with their wolf-nurse, were struck by a thunderbolt and fell to the ground. The prophecies made by the soothsayers from these events were fulfilled to the letter.'
Hurtled his blows at the temples and monuments raised in his honour,
And on the Capitol's site unloosed the bolts of his lightning.
[45]
What, for example, is his object
in hurling them into the middle of the sea? or, as
he so often does, on to the tops of lofty mountains?
Why, pray, does he waste them in solitary deserts?
And why does he fling them on the shores of peoples
who do not take any notice of them?
20. "Oh! but you say, 'the head was found in
the Tiber.'1 As if I contended that your soothsayers were devoid of art! My contention is that
there is no divination. By dividing the heavens in
the manner already indicated2 and by noting what
happened in each division the soothsayers learn
whence the thunderbolt comes and whither it goes,
[p. 421]
but no method can show that the thunderbolt has
any prophetic value. However, you array those
verses of mine against me:
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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