tifarious idolatry *, all the modes of divination were familiarly known. In vain were wise men chosen to fill the departments of government; in vain did the General form in his tent a noble plan, unless the Haruspex or the Augur pronounced a happy concurrence of favourable omens. Well might they be said to understand dark sentences, who could translate the growl of thunder, or the croaking of a raven, into intelligible language; and interpret the meaning of a chicken, when he pecked his corn in this or that particular manner, or being perhaps already gorged, refused to eat at all! The disasters incurred by some commanders, who despised or neglected these matters, contributed highly to rivet the superstition in question. Of this kind was the overthrow of Flaminius at the Thrasymene lake, and of Crassus in Parthia. These pretensions to *Genetrix et mater superstitionis. (Arnob. contra Gent. vii.) Asylas, a prince of Etruria, excelled in all the arts of divination: ....... Ille hominum divumque interpres Asylas Cui pecudum fibræ, cœli cui sidera parent, Et linguæ volucrum, et præsagi fulminis ignes. (Virg. Æn. x. 175.) So likewise did Aruns in Lucan: Hæc propter placuit Tuscos de more vetusto Acciri vates; quorum qui maximus ævo Aruns incoluit desertæ mænia Lunæ, Fulminis edoctus motus venasque calentes Fibrarum et monilus errantis in aëre pennæ. (i. 584.) may be declared to I am aware that, in knowledge were, indeed, idle and ambiguous. Yet when the very being of a nation seems to depend upon such a science (as was the case at Rome) the people pretending to have a consummate skill in this science understand dark sentences. other nations, recourse was had to these arts; that they were in use among the Chaldæans, the Egyptians, and the Greeks. According to Plutarch, Lycurgus sanctified the Lacedæmonians with divinations and omens, Ion the Athenians, Deucalion all the Greeks in general, and Numa the Romans. But I must insist that, among the Romans chiefly, matters of the greatest moment wholly depended upon them*. Augurial ceremonies were interwoven with all their * Catrou, in his remarks upon the following lines in Virgil, His aliud majus Juturna adjungit, et alto Dat signum cælo, quo non præsentius ullum observes, that the words Italas mentes should be particularly noticed; the Italians paying much greater attention to auguries than any other nation.-Non solamente gli augurii erano il fondamento in bona parte dell' antica religione de' gentili, ma ancora erano quelli che erano cagione del bene essere della republica Romana. (Machiavelli sopra la prima Deca di Tito Livio, i. 14.) Livy puts the following words into the mouth of Appius Claudius: Eludant nunc licèt religionem. Quid enim interest, si pulli non pascentur, si ex caveâ tardiùs exierint, si occinuerit avis? Parva sunt hæc, sed parva ista non contemnendo majores nostri proceedings. In the infancy of the state, the destiny of the two brothers, Romulus and Remus, was determined by the flight of vultures. It was an express decree of the senate, that there should be no deviation whatever from the directions prescribed by the Augurs.' These men, indeed, may truly be said to have governed Rome. The most trifling incidents frequently, in times of dangert, afforded presages of futurity to their most experienced generals. "In Italy," as an acute writer observes, "not only private superstition prevailed, but the most important steps of the state were over-ruled by the Haruspices and Augurs; and their Consuls and Prætors bowed nostri maximam hanc rempublicam fecerunt.-Haruspicinam ego reipublicæ causa communisque religionis colendam censeo. (Cic. Div. iii.) "The chief religion of those times lay in the Augurs and the Haruspices; that is to say, in the prognostics which were drawn from the flight of birds, or the entrails of beasts. The priests and sacrificers persuaded the people, that in these they plainly read the destinies of men. This pious fraud afterward became one of the mysteries of state." (Vertol's Revolutions of Rome, I. 4.) *Romulus non solùm auspicatò Urbem condidisse, sed etiam optimus Augur fuisse traditur. Deinde Auguribus et reliqui reges usi; et, exactis regibus, nihil publicè sine auspiciis nec domi nec militiæ gerebant. (Cic. Div. i. 1.) + Quod in pace Fors et Natura, tune Fatum et Ira Dei vocabatur. (Tac. Hist. II.) before a presage taken from the entrails of beasts, the flight of birds, and signs from heaven*." Cicero has remarked, that the Romans surpassed all other nations in piety and religion†. But what was this religion? Did it not principally consist in that attention, which they uniformly paid to the occult science of divination; to omens, prodigies, spectres, dreams, visions, auguries, and oracles? The procuratio prodigiorum, and of all events which were thought to prognosticate the displeasure of the gods, wholly under the direction of the Haruspices, Augurs, and Decemviri Librorum, was often childishly ridiculous: as when a Dictator was named for the sole purpose of driving a nail into a post, which the meanest artist in the Emilian school would have done with tenfold dexterity; and when it's efficacy was made to depend upon the proper repetition of the number threet and it's compounds. At some times, it was madly expensive: as when they decreed a ver sacrum; i. e. devoted to the *Inquiry into the Life of Homer, p. 221. + Nec numero Hispanos, nec robore Gallos, nec calliditate Panos, nec artibus Græcos, sed pietate ac religione omnes gentes nationesque superavimus. (Cic. de Harusp. Resp.) Of this we have a remarkable instance in Livy: Ejusdem rei causâ Ludi Magni voti æris trecentis triginta tribus millibus, trecentis triginta tribus, triente, præterea bubus Jovi trecentis. (Liv. xxii. 10.) altar the entire offspring of their flocks, for at least a considerable part of the year. This seemed more likely to have produced a general famine. At others, it was inhumanly cruel. Thus, upon the report of a prophecy, that the Greeks and the Gauls were to possess the city,' they buried alive a man and a woman of each of these two nations in the Forum Boarium; as if by this barbarous act they should accomplish, or elude, the prediction. Instances of all these are to be found in various historians, and fully prove the universal eagerness of the Romans to extract abstruse meanings from things that had no meaning at all. They fully prove the implicit confidence given to certain professional men, who undertook to explain the dark language in which (as they pretended) the gods required particular expiations, at once disgraceful to the offerers and to the beings to whom they were offered. The emperor Constantine himself, after he had embraced Christianity, was so addicted to this superstition, that he directed the Haruspices to be consulted when a public edifice was destroyed by lightning. Nor less singular was the reverence, in which the Sibylline oracles were held at Rome. These literally enigmatical books, if we believe Cicero*, *Callidè enim, qui illa composuit, perfecit ut quodcunque aceidisset prædictum videretur. (Cic. iii.) Flexiloqua et obscura oracula |