he divided the regions of the vine to find his sow?[1] I should despise it, if I were not aware that King Hostilius had carried on most important wars in deference to his auguries; but by the negligence of our nobility the discipline of the augury is now omitted, the truth of the auspices despised, and only a mere form observed; so that the most important affairs of the commonwealth, even the wars, on which the public safety depends, are conducted without any auspices; the Peremnia[2] are discussed; no part of the Acumina[3] performed; no select men are called to witness to the military testaments;[4] our generals now begin their wars as soon as they have arranged the Auspicia. The force of religion was so great among our ancestors that some of their commanders have, with their faces veiled, and with the solemn, formal expressions of religion, sacrificed themselves to the immortal Gods to save their country.[5] I could mention many of the Sibylline prophecies, and many answers of the haruspices, to confirm those things, which ought not to be doubted.
IV. For example: our augurs and the Etrurian haruspices saw the truth of their art established when P. Scipio and C. Figulus were consuls; for as Tiberius Gracchus, who was a second time consul, wished to proceed to a
- ↑ This short passage would be very obscure to the reader without an explanation from another of Cicero's treatises. The expression here, ad investigandum suem regiones vineæ terminavit, which is a metaphor too bold, if it was not a sort of augural language, seems to me to have been the effect of carelessness in our great author; for Navius did not divide the regions, as he calls them, of the vine to find his sow, but to find a grape.
- ↑ The Peremnia were a sort of auspices performed just before the passing a river.
- ↑ The Acumina were a military auspices, and were partly performed on the point of a spear, from which they were called Acumina.
- ↑ Those were called testamenta in procinctu, which were made by soldiers just before an engagement, in the presence of men called as witnesses.
- ↑ This especially refers to the Decii, one of whom devoted himself for his country in the war with the Latins, 340 B.C., and his son imitated the action in the war with the Samnites, 295 B.C. Cicero (Tusc. i. 37) says that his son did the same thing in the war with Pyrrhus at the battle of Asculum, though in other places (De Off. iii. 4) he speaks of only two Decii as having signalized themselves in this manner.
