Chap. 66.] LAWS or lightniito. 85 



quicker than the lightning \ on which account it is that every- 

 thing is shaken and blown up before it is struck, and that a 

 Eerson is never injured when he has seen the lightning and 

 eard the thunder. Thunder on the left hand is supposed 

 to be lucky, because the east is on the left side of the hea- 

 vens^. We do not regard so much the mode in which it comes 

 to us, as that in which it leaves us, whether the fire rebounds 

 after the stroke, or whether the current of air returns when 

 the operation is concluded and the fire is consumed. In rela- 

 tion to this object the Etrurians have divided the heavens into 

 sixteen parts ^. The first great division is from north to east ; 

 the second to the south ; the third to the west, and the fourth 

 occupies what remains from west to north. Each of these has 

 been subdivided into four parts, of which the eight on the east 

 have been called the left, and those on the west the right divi- 

 sions. Those which extend from the west to the north have 

 been considered the most impropitious. It becomes therefore 

 very important to ascertain fix)m what quarter the thunder 

 proceeds, and in what direction it falls. It is considered a 

 very favourable omen when it returns into the eastern divi- 

 sions. But it prognosticates the greatest felicity when the 

 thunder proceeds from the first-mentioned part of the heavens 

 and falls Dack into it ; it was an omep of this kind which, as we 

 have heard, was given to Sylla, the Dictator. The remaining 

 quarters of the heavens are less propitious, and also less to 

 be dreadf d. There are some kinds of thunder which it is 

 not thought right to speak of, or even to listen to, unless 

 when they have been disclosed to the master of a family or 

 to a parent. But the futility of this observation was de- 

 tected when the temple of Juno was struck at Eome, during 



* The following remark of Seneca va&j be referred to, both as iUnstra* 

 ting our author and as showing how much more correct the opinions of 

 Seneca were than his own, on many points of natural philosophy; 



" necesse est, ut iaipetus fuhninis et pramittat spiritus, et agat ante 



Be, et a tergo trahat ventum ....;" Nat. Qusest. hb. ii. § 20. p. 706. 



2 " quoniam heva parte mundi ortus est." On this passage Hardouin 

 remarks ; " a Deormn sede, quimi in meridiem spectes, ad sinistram sunt 

 partes mundi exorientes ;" Lemaire, i. 353. Poinsiaet enters into a long 

 detail respecting opinions of the ancients on this point and the circum- 

 stances which induced them to form their opinions j i. 34 et seq. 



3 See Cicero de Divin. ii 42. 



