Page:The Natural History of Pliny.djvu/58

 24 plint's NATUEAL HISTOET. [Book II. nativity; they suppose that God, once for all, issues his decrees and never afterwards interferes. This opinion be- gins to gain ground, and both the learned and the unlearned vulgar are falling into it. Hence we have the admonitions of thunder, the w^arnings 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 wretched than man. For 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 siagle star, and, occasion- ally, a constellation ; as in Marulius, i. 541, 2. " quantis bis sena ferantur Finibus astra " It is also used by synecdoche for the heavens, as is the case with the EngHsh word stars. See Gresner's Thesaiu'us, ^ " 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. 2 We learn the exact natiire of this ominous accident from Suetonius ; " .... si mane sibi calceus perperam, et sinister pro dextro induceretur ; " Augustus, Cap. 92. From tliis passage it woxild appear, that the Koman sandals were made, as we term it, right and left.