Mopsus,[1] Tiresias,[2] Amphiaraus,[3] Calchas,[4] and Helenas[5] (who would not have been delivered down to us as augurs even in fable if their art had been despised), may we not be sufficiently apprised of the power of the Gods by domestic examples? Will not the temerity of P. Claudius, in the first Punic war, affect us? who, when the poultry were let out of the coop and would not feed, ordered them to be thrown into the water, and, joking even upon the Gods, said, with a sneer, “Let them drink, since they will not eat;” which piece of ridicule, being followed by a victory over his fleet, cost him many tears, and brought great calamity on the Roman people. Did not his colleague Junius, in the same war, lose his fleet in a tempest by disregarding the auspices? Claudius, therefore, was condemned by the people, and Junius killed himself. Cœlius says that P. Flaminius, from his neglect of religion, fell at Thrasimenus; a loss which the public severely felt. By these instances of calamity we may be assured that Rome owes her grandeur and success to the conduct of those who were tenacious of their religious duties; and if we compare ourselves to our neighbors, we shall find that we are infinitely distinguished above foreign nations by our zeal for religious ceremonies, though in other things we may be only equal to them, and in other respects even inferior to them.
Ought we to contemn Attius Navius’s staff, with which
- ↑ Mopsus. There were two soothsayers of this name: the first was one of the Lapithæ, son of Ampycus and Chloris, called also the son of Apollo and Hienantis; the other a son of Apollo and Manto, who is said to have founded Mallus, in Asia Minor, where his oracle existed as late as the time of Strabo.
- ↑ Tiresias was the great Theban prophet at the time of the war of the Seven against Thebes.
- ↑ Amphiaraus was King of Argos (he had been one of the Argonauts also), he was killed after the war of the Seven against Thebes, which he was compelled to join in by the treachery of his wife Eriphyle, by the earth opening and swallowing him up as he was fleeing from Periclymenus.
- ↑ Calchas was the prophet of the Grecian army at the siege of Troy.
- ↑ Helenus was a son of Priam and Hecuba. He is represented as a prophet in the Philoctetes of Sophocles. And in the Æneid he is also represented as king of part of Epirus, and as predicting to Æneas the dangers and fortunes which awaited him.
