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15While mortals were acting thus under the influence of money, Heaven at the very beginning of the next year struck with a thunderbolt the statue of Jupiter erected on the Alban Mount, and so delayed the return of Ptolemy for some time. 2For when they read the Sibylline verses, they found written in them this very passage: “If the king of Egypt come requesting any aid, refuse him not friendship, nor yet succour him with any great force; else you shall have both toils and dangers.” 3Thereupon, amazed at the coincidence between the verses and the events of the time, they rescinded all their action in his case, following the advice of Gaius Cato, a tribune. Such was the nature of the oracle; and it was made public through Cato. 4Now it was unlawful to announce to the populace any of the Sibylline verses, unless the senate voted it; yet as soon as the sense of the verses, as usually happens, began to be talked about, he became afraid that it might be suppressed, and so brought the priests before the populace and there compelled them to utter the oracle before the senate had taken any action at all in the matter. The more scruples they had against doing so, [the more insistent] was the multitude.
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