[46]
Besides, you
quote me as authority for the remarkable fact that,
at the very time when proof of the conspiracy was
being presented to the Senate, the statue of Jupiter,
which had been contracted for two years before, was
being erected on the Capitol.
"'Will you then '—for thus you pleaded with
me—' will you then persuade yourself to take sides
against me in this discussion, in the face of your
own writings and of your own practice? ' You are
my brother and on that account I shrink from recrimination.1 But what, pray, is causing you distress
in this matter? Is it the nature of the subject?
Or is it my insistence on finding out the truth?
And so I waive your charge of my inconsistency—
I am asking you for an explanation of the entire
subject of soothsaying. But you betook yourself to
a strange place of refuge. You knew that you
would be in straits when I asked your reason for
each kind of divination, and, hence, you had much
[p. 423]
to say to this effect: 'Since I see what divination
does I do not ask the reason or the cause why it
does it. The question is, what does it do? not,
why does it do it? ' As if I would grant either that
divination accomplished anything, or that it was
permissible for a philosopher not to ask why anything happened!
1 Orelli interprets thus: eo vereor dicere, te vel desipere, vel iniquius mecum agere; id quod v.c. Epicureo alicui exprobrarem apertius. Moser with a few MSS. reads non vereor and explains, eo non vereor, sc. fateri, quod sentio; quamquam alibi aliter locutus sum, nimirum publice, et rei pub. causa.
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