temples struck by lightning,
statues overthrown, wolves entering the city, and so on; they are
extremely abundant in the terrible years of the Social and Civil Wars,
become less frequent after the death of Sulla, and break out again
in full force with the murder of Caesar. They were reported to the
pontifices from the places where they were supposed to have occurred,
and if thought worthy of expiation were entered in the pontifical
books. We may suppose that they were sent in chiefly by the
uneducated. But among men of education we have many examples of this
same nervousness, of which two or three must suffice. Sulla, as we
know from his own Memoirs, which were used directly or indirectly by
Plutarch, had a strong vein of superstition in his nature, and made
no attempt to control it. In dedicating his Memoirs to Lucullus he
advised him "to think no course so safe as that which is enjoined
by the [Greek: daimon] (perhaps his genius) in the night";[572]
and Plutarch tells us several tales of portents on which he acted,
evidently drawn from this same autobiography. We are told of him that
he always carried a small image of Apollo, which he kissed from time
to time, and to which he prayed silently in moments of danger.[573]
Again, Cicero tells us a curious story of himself, Varro, and Cato,
which shows that those three men of philosophical learning were quite
liable to be frightened by a prophecy which to us would not seem to
have much claim to respect.[574] He tells how when the three were
at Dyrrachium, after Caesar's defeat there and the departure of the
armies into Thessaly, news was brought them by the commander of the
Rhodian fleet that a certain rower had foretold that within thirty
days Greece would be weltering in blood; how all three were terribly
frightened, and how a few days later the news of the battle at
Pharsalia reached them. Lastly, we all remember the vision which
appeared to Brutus on the eve of the battle of Philippi, of a huge and
fearsome figure standing by him in silence, which Shakespeare has made
into the ghost of Caesar and used to unify his play. According to
Plutarch, the Epicurean Cassius, as Lucretius would have done,
attempted to convince his friend on rational grounds that the vision
need not alarm him, but apparently in vain.[575]

2. Lucretius had denied the doctrine of the immortality of the soul,
as the cause of so much of the misery which he believed it to be his
mission to avert. Caes