[86]
"There is a tradition that, concurrently with the
finding of the lots and in the spot where the temple
of Fortune now stands, honey flowed from an olive-tree. Now the soothsayers, who had declared that
those lots would enjoy an unrivalled reputation,
gave orders that a chest should be made from the
tree and the lots placed in the chest. At the present
time the lots are taken from their receptacle if
Fortune directs.1 What reliance, pray, can you put
in these lots, which at Fortune's nod are shuffled
and drawn by the hand of a child? And how did
they ever get in that rock? Who cut down the oak-tree? and who fashioned and carved the lots?
Oh! but somebody says, ' God can bring anything
to pass.' If so, then I wish he had made the Stoics
wise, so that they would not be so pitiably and
distressingly superstitious and so prone to believe
everything they hear! This sort of divining, however, has now been discarded by general usage.
The beauty and age of the temple still preserve
the name of the lots of Praeneste—that is, among
the common people,
1 If the statue of the goddess gives a sign by a nod or otherwise.
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