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] have brought to pass a portent which I hail with delight.

Yes, as Babylonius fell, so shall Babylon fall, stripped of all the splendour of its adornments.

What wisdom in interpretation!

By the gods, it must be so!

So, and not otherwise!

[To .] The army shall continue to advance. Nevertheless, for still greater security, I will sacrifice this evening and see what the omens indicate. As for you Etruscan jugglers, whom I have brought hither at so great a cost, I will no longer suffer you in the camp, where you serve only to damp the soldiers' spirits. You know nothing of the difficult calling you profess. What effrontery! What measureless presumption! Away with them! I will not set eyes on them again. [Some of the guards drive the Soothsayers out to the left.

Babylonius fell. The lion succumbed before my soldiers. Yet these things do not tell us what invisible help we have to depend upon. The gods, whose essence is as yet by no means duly ascertained, seem sometimes—if I may say so—to slumber, or, on the whole, to concern themselves very little with human affairs. We, my dear friends, are so unfortunate as to live in such an