[52]
For how many
things predicted by them really come true? If any
[p. 431]
do come true, then what reason can be advanced
why the agreement of the event with the prophecy
was not due to chance? While Hannibal was in
exile at the court of King Prusias he advised the
king to go to war, but the king replied, 'I do not
dare, because the entrails forbid.' ' And do you,' said
Hannibal, 'put more reliance in pieces of ox-meat
than you do in a veteran commander?' Again,
when Caesar himself was warned by a most eminent
soothsayer not to cross over to Africa before the
winter solstice, did he not cross? If he had not done
so all the forces opposed to him would have effected
a junction. Why need I give instances—and, in
fact, I could give countless ones—where the prophecies of soothsayers either were without result or
the issue was directly the reverse of the prophecy?
Cicero: De Senectute De Amicitia De Divinatione. With An English Translation. William Armistead Falconer. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1923.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
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.