[75]
Now, in the first place,
do not understand that by 'the president' they
meant the president of the prerogative century, for
he was dead; and, moreover, they could have told
that by conjecture without the use of divination;
or, in the second place, perhaps, they said so by
accident which is in no wise to be left out of account
[p. 457]
in cases of this kind. For what could the Etruscan
soothsayers have known, either as to whether the
tabernaculum had been properly placed, or as to
whether the regulations pertaining to the pomerium1
had been observed? For my part, I agree with
Gaius Marcellus, rather than with Appius Claudius
—both of whom were my colleagues—and I think
that, although in the beginning augural law was
established from a belief in divination, yet later it
was maintained and preserved from considerations
of political expediency.
1 As to tabernaculum and pomerium see i. 17. 33 and note
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