tent in the gardens of Scipio, and had afterward
entered the Pomoerium, in order to hold a senate, but that in repassing
the same Pomoerium he had forgotten to take the auspices; and that,
therefore, the consuls had been created informally. The augurs laid the
case before the senate. The senate decreed that they should resign
their charge, and so they accordingly abdicated. What greater example
need we seek for? The wisest, perhaps the most excellent of men, chose
to confess his fault, which he might have concealed, rather than leave
the public the least atom of religious guilt; and the consuls chose to
quit the highest office in the State, rather than fill it for a moment
in defiance of religion. How great is the reputation of the augurs!

And is not the art of the soothsayers divine? And must not every one
who sees what innumerable instances of the same kind there are confess
the existence of the Gods? For they who have interpreters must
certainly exist themselves; now, there are interpreters of the Gods;
therefore we must allow there are Gods. But it may be said, perhaps,
that all predictions are not accomplished. We may as well conclude
there is no art of physic, because all sick persons do not recover. The
Gods show us signs of future events; if we are occasionally deceived in
the results, it is not to be imputed to the nature of the Gods, but to
the conjectures of men. All nations agree that there are Gods; the
opinion is innate, and, as it were, engraved in the minds of all men.
The only point in dispute among us is, what they are.

V. Their existence no one denies. Cleanthes, one of our sect, imputes
the way in which the idea of the Gods is implanted in the minds of men
to four causes. The first is that which I just now mentioned--the
foreknowledge of future things. The second is the great advantages
which we enjoy from the temperature of the air, the fertility of the
earth, and the abundance of various benefits of other kinds. The third
cause is deduced from the terror with which the mind is affected by
thunder, tempests, storms, snow, hail, devastation, pestilence,
earthquakes often attended with hideous noises, showers of stones, and
rain like drops of blood; by rocks and sudden openings of the earth; by
monstrous births of men and beasts; by meteors in the air, and blazing
stars, by the Greeks called _cometae_, by us _crinitae_, the appearance
of which, in the late Octavian war,[120] were foreboders of great