24 plint's NATUEAL HISTOBT. [Book II. 



nativity; they suppose that God, once for all, issues his 

 decrees and never afterwards interferes. This opinion be- 

 gins to gain ground, and both the learned and the unlearned 

 vulgar are falling intp it. Hence we have the admonitions 

 of thunder, the warnings of oracles, the predictions of sooth- 

 sayers, and things too trifling to be mentioned, as sneezing 

 and stumbling with the feet reckoned among omens ^ The 

 late Emperor Augustus^ relates, that he put the left shoe on 

 the wrong foot, the day when he was near being assaulted 

 by his soldiers'. And such things as these so embarrass 

 improvident mortals, that among all of them this alone is 

 certain, that there is nothing certain, and that there is no- 

 thing more proud or more wretched than man. < For other 

 animals have no care but to provide for their subsistence, 

 for which the spontaneous kindness of nature is all-suffi- 

 cient; and this one circumstance renders their lot more 

 especially preferable, that they never think about glory, or 

 money, or ambition, and, above aU, that they never reflect 

 on death. 



The belief, however, that on these points the Gods super- 

 intend human affairs is useful to us, as well as that the 

 punishment of crimes, although sometimes tardy, from the 

 Deity being occupied with such a mass of business, is never 

 entirely remitted, and that the human race was not made 

 the next in rank to himself, in order that they might be de- 

 graded like brutes. And indeed this constitutes the great 

 comfort in this imperfect state of man, that even the Deity 



synonymous "with wtfiw, generally signifying a single star, and, occasion- 

 ally, a constellation ; as in Manilius, i. 541, 2. 



" qnantis bis sena ferantur 



Finibus astra " 



It is also used by synecdoche for the heavens, as is the case with the 

 EngHsh word stars. See Q^sner's Thesaurus. 



1 " Quae si suscipiamus, pedis offensio nobis . . . et stemutamenta erunt 

 obserranda." Cicero, De Nat. Deor. ii. 84. 



2 " Divus Augustus." The epithet divus may be regarded as merely a 

 term of court etiquette, because all the Emperors after death were deified 

 ex officio. 



3 We learn the exact nature of this ominous accident from Suetonius ; 

 ". . . . si mane sibi calceus perperam, et sinister pro dextro induceretur ; " 

 Avigustus, Cap. 92. From this passage it would appear, that the Eoman 

 sondals were made, as we term it, right and left. 



