s also they drew several presages. If the flame was clear,
if it mounted up without dividing, and went not out till the victim was
entirely consumed, this was a proof that the sacrifice was accepted; but
if they found it difficult to kindle the fire, if the flame divided, if
it played around instead of taking bold of the victim, if it burnt ill,
or went out, it was a bad omen. The business, however, of the Aruspices
was not confined to the altars and sacrifices, they had an equal right
to explain all other portents. The Senate frequently consulted them on
the most extraordinary prodigies. The college of the Aruspices, as well
as those of the other religious orders, had their registers and
records, such as memorials of thunder and lightning,[12] the Tuscan
histories,[13] etc.

DIVISIONS OP DIVINATION BY THE ANCIENTS--PRODIGIES, ETC.

Divination was divided by the ancients into artificial and natural. The
first is conducted by reasoning upon certain external signs, considered
as indications of futurity; the other consists in that which presages
things from a mere internal sense, and persuasion of the mind, without
any assistance of signs; and is of two kinds, the one from nature, and
the other by influx. The first supposes that the soul, collected within
itself, and not diffused or divided among the organs of the body, has
from its own nature and essence, some fore-knowledge of future things;
witness, for instance, what is seen in dreams, ecstasies, and on the
confines of death. The second supposes the soul after the manner of a
mirror to receive some secondary illumination from the presence of God
and other spirits. Artificial divination is also of two kinds: the one
argues from natural causes, as in the predictions of physicians relative
to the event of diseases, from the tongue, pulse, etc. The second the
consequence of experiments and observations arbitrarily instituted, and
is mostly superstitious. The systems of divination reduceable under
these heads are almost incalculable. Among these were the Augurs or
those who drew their knowledge of futurity from the flight, and various
other actions of birds; the Aruspices, from the entrails of beasts;
palmestry or the lines of the hands; points marked at random; numbers,
names, the motions of a scene, the air, fire, the Praenestine, Homerian,
and Virgilian lots, dreams, etc.

Whoever reads the Roman historians[14] must be surprised at the number of
prodigies which are c