670 
AUGURY. 
tlie signal for Bght, when his son having discovered the false augury, 
hastened to comiiuinicate it to his father, “ Do thy part well,’' was 
the reply, “and let tlie deceit of the augur fall on himself. The tripu- 
diufii has been announced to me, and no omen can be better for the 
Roman army and people !’* As the troops advanced, a javelin, thrown 
at random, struck the pullarius dead. “The hand of heaven is in the 
battle,” cried Papirius, “ the guilty is punished !’’ and he advanced and 
conquered. 
There were many signs to be derived from animals which came 
under the fourth division of Augury. A wolf running to the right 
w'ith his mouth full, was an argument of great joy; Pint. viii. 22. 
A wolf in the capitol was an ill portent, and occasioned its lustration, 
Liv. iii. 29. The defeat of the Romans at the Ticimis was prognosti- 
cated by the entrance of a wolf, into their camp, and his esca})e 
unhurt, after wounding his pursuers ; Liv. xxi. 4(5. and still greater 
calamities of the second Punic war were announced, when a more 
daring animal of the same breed carried away the sword of a centiiiel 
in Gaul: Id. 62. A wolf once put a stop to a plan of colonization 
in Libya, by hungrily devourisig the land-marks which had been 
assigned for the new settlement, {Pint. In Vita C. Gracchi,) but, to 
make amends for this .act, on another occasion, by running away wnth 
a burnt sacrifice from the altar, an animal of the same .kind led his 
Samnite pursuers to the spot afterwards occupied, in commemoration 
of the chase, by the Hirpini, Festiis, ix. A wolf running away w ith 
his slate, (tabula,) from Iliero, w hen a school-boy, was thought to por- 
tend his future greatness. 
Swarms of bees, if observed on any public place, as the forum of a 
temple, were carefully noted, and the ill omen which they were sup- 
posed to bring was averted with all diligence by repeated sacrifices. 
Scipio’s tent was polluted by them before the battle of Ticinus. The 
speaking of oxen, an occurrence, (if we credit Livy, by no means un- 
common,) for he has recorded it eight or nine times, betokened some 
negligence towards the state, and demanded copious expiation. Now 
and then a cow dropped a foal instead of a calf, or ran up stairs into 
the second or third slory of a house. Both of these acts w ere great 
sources of consternation. Locusts were formidable, not only from 
the natural devastation which they produced, but from the supernatu- 
ral vengeance which they threatened. Even the nibblingof mice was 
not to be disregarded ; and it was not only to the divine epics of the 
starving garreteer, {Juv. iii.) that the teeth of these little marauders 
were addressed ; they sometimes looked for higher game, and indented 
the golden crown of the Thunderer himself: Liv. xxvii. 23. xxx. 2. 
nay, their inauspicious squeak deprived Fabius Maximus of his dicta- 
torship: Val. Max. i. He whose path, in stepping from his threshold, 
was crossed by a hare, or a pregnant fox, or a bitch, or a snake, or a 
weasel, would do well to return home ; but if he w ere fortunate enough 
to encounter a she-goat, let him proceed with a merry heart, and 
think upon Caranus : Justin, vii. 
The fifth and last division of Augury had respect to D'irco, a word 
which scarcely admits of a close translation., and which we must be 
content to render, vaguely, prodigies. Of these, Livy w’ill furnish the 
