But how much simpler is the division employed by our distinguished 1 Stoic, Attalus, who combined skill in the Etruscan lore with all the subtlety of Greek thought! Of the different kinds of lightning, he says, one gives intimation of something that concerns us, another kind intimates either a thing of no importance or something whose meaning does not reach us. Of the significant lightning there are several varieties--one is favourable, one unfavourable, a third neither one nor other. Of the unfavourable there are all these forms--the evils 2 portended may be either unavoidable or avoidable, or such as may be mitigated, or such as may be delayed. Again, the benefits foretold by the favourable may be either abiding or transient. The mixture of favourable and unfavourable may either consist of half and half, good and ill; or ill may be turned by them into good, or good into ill. The lightning that is neither unfavourable nor favourable gives us intimation of some action by which we need neither be terrified nor elated, for example, a journey abroad from which there is nothing either to fear or hope. LI Let me revert for a moment to the lightning that portends something, but a something that does not concern us; for instance, whether the same kind of lightning as has occurred will again occur in the same year. Sometimes lightning contains no indication at all, or one whose grasp eludes us; as, for example, those manifestations of it that are scattered through the spaces of the sea or in lonely deserts. Their indication, if any, is lost. LII