mistake, omission, or addition, which were supposed to insure success apart from the intention of those offering them. Thus the whole life of the Romans was filled with invocations, propitiations, purifications, and even in any small matter a whole string of gods had prayer and service offered to them, and no one of their names might be omitted. Consider again the great frequency of the offerings, whether propitiative or consultatory; and, further, how particular beasts belonged to particular gods. The mere expense of victims was felt as a great burden. It was reckoned that on the accession of Caligula 160,000 animals, chiefly oxen and calves, were sacrificed in the Roman Empire in token of the general joy; and Augustus and Marcus Aurelius devoted such a multitude of beasts to their sacrifices that what had been said of the former was repeated as to the latter, how the white oxen had written to him, saying, “If you conquer, we are lost.” Indications of the will of the gods were to be taken on all occasions; nothing was to be done in public or private without consulting the auspices. Then there was the institution of the Haruspices, in its two branches of examining the entrails of the victims, and divining the meaning of all prodigies. One is still amazed at the ever-untiring solicitude which the senate showed to have all these things carefully watched—eclipses, rainbows of unusual colours, shooting stars, misbirths human or bestial; showers of earth, stones, chalk, or ashes; mice gnawing the golden vessels of a temple, bees swarming on a public place, but especially a shrine touched by lightning. Such things struck senate and people with consternation; special supplications were ordered to appease the causers of them.(12)