24 
PLIIS^X'S 15TATXJEAL HISTOBT. 
[Book II. 
nativity ; they suppose that Grod, once for all, issues his 
decrees and never afterwards interferes. This opinion he- 
gins to gain ground, and both the learned and the unlearned 
vulgar are falling into 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 WTctched than man. Tor 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 all, that they never reflect 
on death. 
The belief, however, that on these points the Grods 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 sidus, generally signifying a single star, a.nd, occasion- 
ally, a constellation ; as in ManiliLis, i. 541, 2. 
" qnantis bis sena ferantur 
Finibus astra " 
It is also used by synecdoche for the heavens, as is the case with the 
English word stars. See G-esner's Thesaurus. 
^ " Quae si suscipiamus, pedis ofFensio nobis , . . et sternutamenta erunt 
observanda." 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 ; " 
Augustus, Cap. 92. From this passage it would appear, that the Roman 
sandals were made, as we term it, right and left. 
