Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/210

But the Etruscan occupied himself above all in the interpretation of signs and portents. The Romans heard the voice of the gods in nature; but their bird-seer understood only the signs in their simplicity, and knew only generally whether the occurrence boded good or ill. Disturbances of the ordinary course of nature were regarded by him as boding evil, and put a stop to the business in hand, as when for example a storm of thunder and lightning dispersed the comitia; and it was sought to get rid of them, as in the case of monstrous births, which were put to death as speedily as possible. But beyond the Tiber matters were carried much further. The penetrating Etruscan read off to the believer his future fortunes in detail from the lightning and from the entrails of animals offered in sacrifice, and the more singular the language of the gods, the more startling the portent or prodigy, the more confidently did he declare what they foretold and the means by which it was possible to avert the mischief. Thus arose the lore of lightning, and of the inspection of entrails, and of the interpretation of prodigies—all of them, and the science of lightning especially, devised with the hair-splitting subtlety which the mind indulges in when pursuing absurdities. A dwarf called Tages, with the figure of a child but with gray hairs, who had been ploughed up by a peasant in a field near Tarquinii—we might almost fancy that practices at once so childish and drivelling had sought to present in this figure a caricature of themselves—betrayed the secret of this lore to the Etruscans, and then straightway died. His disciples and successors taught what gods were in the habit of hurling the lightning; how, moreover, the lightning of each god might be recognized by its colour and the quarter of the heavens whence it came; whether the lightning boded a permanent change of things or a single event; and in the latter case whether the event was one unalterably fixed, or whether it could be up to a certain limit postponed; how they might convey the lightning away when it struck, or compel the threatening lightning to strike, and various marvellous arts of the like kind, with which by-the-way there was conjoined no small desire of pocketing fees. How deeply repugnant all this was to the Roman character is shown by the fact that, even when people came at a later period to employ the Etruscan lore in Rome, no attempt was made to naturalize it; during our present period the Romans were probably still content with their own, and with the Grecian, oracles.