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

[46] Besides, you quote me as authority for the remarkable fact that, at the very time when proof of the conspiracy was being presented to the Senate, the statue of Jupiter, which had been contracted for two years before, was being erected on the Capitol.

"'Will you then '—for thus you pleaded with me—' will you then persuade yourself to take sides against me in this discussion, in the face of your own writings and of your own practice? ' You are my brother and on that account I shrink from recrimination.¹ But what, pray, is causing you distress in this matter? Is it the nature of the subject? Or is it my insistence on finding out the truth? And so I waive your charge of my inconsistency— I am asking you for an explanation of the entire subject of soothsaying. But you betook yourself to a strange place of refuge. You knew that you would be in straits when I asked your reason for each kind of divination, and, hence, you had much [p. 423] to say to this effect: 'Since I see what divination does I do not ask the reason or the cause why it does it. The question is, what does it do? not, why does it do it? ' As if I would grant either that divination accomplished anything, or that it was permissible for a philosopher not to ask why anything happened!