[5] Ad Att., lib. iv., 2. He recommends that the speech should be put into the hands of all young men, and thus gives further proof that we still here have his own words. When so much has come to us, we cannot but think that an oration so prepared would remain extant. [6] I had better, perhaps, refer my readers to book v., chap. viii., of Mommsen's History. [7] "Politique des Romains dans la religion;" a treatise which was read by its author to certain students at Bordeaux. It was intended as a preface to a longer work. [8] Ad Div., lib. i., 2. [9] Ad Div., lib. i., 5: "Nosti hominis tarditatem, et taciturnitatem." [10] Ad Quintum Fratrem, lib. ii., 3. [11] Ibid., lib. ii., 6. [12] Ad Att., lib. iv., 5. [13] Ad Div., lib. v., 12. [14] Very early in the history of Rome it was found expedient to steal an Etruscan soothsayer for the reading of these riddles, which was gallantly done by a young soldier, who ran off with an old prophet in his arms (Livy, v., 15). We are naively told by the historian that the more the prodigies came the more they were believed. On a certain occasion a crowd of them was brought together: Crows built in the temple of Juno. A green tree took fire. The waters of Mantua became bloody. In one place it rained chalk in another fire. Lightning was very destructive, sinking the temple of a god or a nut-tree by the roadside indifferently. An ox spoke in Sicily. A precocious baby cried out "Io triumphe" before it was born. At Spoletum a woman became a man. An altar was seen in the heavens. A ghostly band of armed men appeared in the Janiculum (Livy, xxiv., 10). On such occasions the "aruspices" always ordered a vast slaughter of victims, and no doubt feasted as did the wicked sons of Eli. Even Horace wrote as though he believed in the anger of the gods--certainly as though he thought that public morals would be improved by renewed attention to them: Delicta majorum immeritus lues, Romane, donec templa refeceris.--Od., lib. iii., 6. [15] See the Preface by M. Guerault to his translation of this oration, De Aruspium Responsis. [16] Ca. ix.: "Who is there so mad that when he looks up to the heavens he does not acknowledge that there are gods, or dares to think that the things which he sees have sprung from chance--things so wonderful that the most intelligent among us do not understand their motions?" [17] Ca. xxviii.: "Quae in tempestate saeva quieta est, et lucet in tenebris, et pulsa loco manet tamen, atque haeret in patria, splendetque per se semper, neque alienis unquam sordibus obsolescit." I regard this as a perfect allocution of words in regard to the arrangement both for the ear and for the intellect.