is proper food for man, nature hath made no animal more fruitful. What a multitude of birds and fishes are taken by the art and contrivance of man only, and which are so delicious to our taste that one would be tempted some times to believe that this Providence which watches over us was an Epicurean! Though we think there are some birds—the alites and oscines,[1] as our augurs call them—which were made merely to foretell events.
The large savage beasts we take by hunting, partly for food, partly to exercise ourselves in imitation of martial discipline, and to use those we can tame and instruct, as elephants, or to extract remedies for our diseases and wounds, as we do from certain roots and herbs, the virtues of which are known by long use and experience. Represent to yourself the whole earth and seas as if before your eyes. You will see the vast and fertile plains, the thick, shady mountains, the immense pasturage for cattle, and ships sailing over the deep with incredible celerity; nor are our discoveries only on the face of the earth, but in its secret recesses there are many useful things, which being made for man, by man alone are discovered.
LXV. Another, and in my opinion the strongest, proof that the providence of the Gods takes care of us is divination, which both of you, perhaps, will attack; you, Cotta, because Carneades took pleasure in inveighing against the Stoics; and you, Velleius, because there is nothing Epicurus ridicules so much as the prediction of events. Yet the truth of divination appears in many places, on many occasions, often in private, but particularly in public concerns. We receive many intimations from the foresight and presages of augurs and auspices; from oracles, prophecies, dreams, and prodigies; and it often happens that by these' means events have proved happy to men, and imminent dangers have been avoided. This knowledge, therefore—call it either a kind of transport, or an art, or a natural faculty—is certainly found only in men, and is a gift from the immortal Gods. If these proofs, when taken
- ↑ Ales, in the general signification, is any large bird; and oscinis is any singing bird. But they here mean those birds which are used in augury: alites are the birds whose flight was observed by the augurs, and oscines the birds from whose voices they augured.
