ing good fortune. Strab. VII.The Cymbri had nuns with white hair and white robes who, in time of war, used to cut the throat of one of their prisoners of war over a cauldron, and then poured the blood into a tankard, and as it dripped they foretold what was to happen; while others opened his belly and, after examining his entrails, announced that their people would gain the victory. And the people of Temistitan, before the Spaniards conquered that town, used to immolate more than 2000 persons every year, and all of them innocent of any crime; Vigener. Comment. on Cæsar.but what is even more strange is that they had two chief idols of an enormous size, which they renewed each year, on a certain day, made of a flour composed from every vegetable and seed which can be used for human purposes, and mixed with the blood of those whom they had immolated. Julian the Apostate, in order to know the future, delighted in cutting people’s throats; Niceph. X. 35.so that after his death they found the bodies of several of those whom he had murdered in his wells and cisterns and drains; and in another town, after having performed horrible sacrifices to the Devil, he had a woman hanged by her hair, after he had first had her cut open while she was alive.
Again, consider how Satan caused the mother of Vitellius to die. Through the mouth of Aurinia he gave this Emperor to understand that he would have a long and secure reign if he survived his mother. Vitellius believed this, and hastened his mother’s end. But I am weary of these bloody examples: let us continue after our former method, and consider less violent matters than those of which we have just spoken, by which none the less we may conclude that it is
