s to our taste that
one would be tempted sometimes to believe that this Providence which
watches over us was an Epicurean! Though we think there are some
birds--the alites and oscines[240], as our augurs call them--which were
made merely to foretell events.

The large savage beasts we take by hunting, partly for food, partly to
exercise ourselves in imitation of martial discipline, and to use those
we can tame and instruct, as elephants, or to extract remedies for our
diseases and wounds, as we do from certain roots and herbs, the virtues
of which are known by long use and experience. Represent to yourself
the whole earth and seas as if before your eyes. You will see the vast
and fertile plains, the thick, shady mountains, the immense pasturage
for cattle, and ships sailing over the deep with incredible celerity;
nor are our discoveries only on the face of the earth, but in its
secret recesses there are many useful things, which being made for man,
by man alone are discovered.

LXV. Another, and in my opinion the strongest, proof that the
providence of the Gods takes care of us is divination, which both of
you, perhaps, will attack; you, Cotta, because Carneades took pleasure
in inveighing against the Stoics; and you, Velleius, because there is
nothing Epicurus ridicules so much as the prediction of events. Yet the
truth of divination appears in many places, on many occasions, often in
private, but particularly in public concerns. We receive many
intimations from the foresight and presages of augurs and auspices;
from oracles, prophecies, dreams, and prodigies; and it often happens
that by these means events have proved happy to men, and imminent
dangers have been avoided. This knowledge, therefore--call it either a
kind of transport, or an art, or a natural faculty--is certainly found
only in men, and is a gift from the immortal Gods. If these proofs,
when taken separately, should make no impression upon your mind, yet,
when collected together, they must certainly affect you.

Besides, the Gods not only provide for mankind universally, but for
particular men. You may bring this universality to gradually a smaller
number, and again you may reduce that smaller number to individuals.

LXVI. For if the reasons which I have given prove to all of us that the
Gods take care of all men, in every country, in every part of the world
separate from our continent, they take care of those who dwell on the
same land with us, from