Cicero, has nevertheless told us very plainly what had been
up to his time the feeling of the Roman world as to Cicero's
self-praise: "Reprehensus est in hac parte non mediocriter
Cicero."

[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