1885.] NEW-YORK MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY. 167 



awe or alarm was looked upon as a miricle of important mean- 

 ing, designed by the gods as a warning of coming events or as a 

 penalty for some past sin of omission or commission. Accord- 

 ingly the national religion provided means both for ascertaining 

 the portents of prodigies and for satisfying their supposed re- 

 quirements. The senate took official notice of thunder-storms, 

 freshets, inundations, earthquakes, eclipses, comets, meteors, 

 hail-storms, and unusual showers of every kind, of the flights of 

 birds, the movements of wild beasts, the actions of domestic 

 animals, of the births of monsters and deformities, both brute 

 and human, and even of various palpably fictitious events 

 founded in mere rumor ; and matters so trifling and insignificant 

 that they seem to us simply ridiculous, — as, for example, the 

 varying appetites and dispositions of certain sacred chickens, — 

 were made subjects of solicitous observation and of grave con- 

 sideration. Upon information of the occurrence of any prodigy 

 in any part of the empire, the Sibylline Books, or Books of the 

 Fates, were solemnly consulted by the priestly officers having 

 the charge of them, and, in accordance with their interpretations 

 and directions, such supplications and sacrifices were decreed as 

 seemed necessary to appease the gods and to expiate supposed 

 faults or to secure desired favors. 



In such a state of society not only were prodigies likely to 

 occur, but, as Livy the historian remarks (Bk XXI., Ch. LXII.),'' 

 " as is not unusual when people's minds have once taken a turn 

 towards superstition, many were reported and credulously ad- 

 mitted " — which perhaps had no basis in fact. In another place 

 (Bk. XXIV., Ch. X.) Livy says. "Numerous prodigies were re- 

 ported to have happened this year [Y. R. 538 : B. C. 214], and the 

 more these were credited by simple and superstitious people, the 

 more such stories multiplied." And in one instance he con- 

 fidently asserts that " several deceptions of the eyes and ears 

 were credited as facts " (Bk. XXIV., Ch. XLIV.). Still later he 

 remarks that there " arose abundance of superstitious notions, 

 and the minds of the people became disposed both to believe 

 and to propagate accounts of prodigies, of which a great number 

 were reported " (Bk. XXIX., Ch. XIV.). 



At last, however, he seems to have felt it incumbent on him 

 to declare a kind of neutrality in what we may believe to have 



^Baker's translation. 



