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40We may infer also from the portents which appeared to them at that time that it was manifestly a supreme struggle in which they were engaged; for Heaven, even as it is ever accustomed to give warning signs before the most unusual events, foretold to them accurately both in Rome and in Macedonia all the results that would come of it. 2Thus, in the city the sun at one time would be diminished and grow extremely small, and again would show itself huge and trebled in size, and once it even shone forth at night; thunderbolts descended at many places and in particular upon the altar of Jupiter Victor; meteors darted hither and thither; notes of trumpets, clashing of arms, and shouts of armed hosts were heard by night from the gardens both of Caesar and of Antony, which were close together beside the Tiber. 3Moreover, a dog dragged the body of another dog to the temple of Ceres, where he dug up the earth with his paws and buried it. A child was born with hands that had ten fingers each, and a mule gave birth to a prodigy of two species, the front part of it resembling a horse and the rest a mule. 4The chariot of Minerva while returning to the Capitol from the races in the Circus was dashed to pieces, and the statue of Jupiter on the Alban Mount sent forth blood from its right shoulder and right hand at the very time of the Feriae. 5These were the warnings they had from Heaven; and there were also rivers in their land which gave out entirely or began to flow backward. And on the part of men, whatever of their doings were directed by chance seemed to point to the same end; 6thus, during the Feriae the prefect of the city celebrated the festival of Latiaris, which neither belonged to him nor was ordinarily observed at that time, and the plebeian aediles celebrated in honour of Ceres contests in armour in place of the games in the Circus. 7These were the events occurring in Rome; and certain oracles also both before and after the events were recited which pointed to the downfall of the republic. In Macedonia, of which Mt. Pangaeum and the territory surrounding it are regarded as a part, bees in swarms surrounded the camp of Cassius, and in the course of the purification of the camp some one set the garland upon his head wrong end foremost, 8and a boy fell down while carrying a Victory in a procession such as the soldiers hold. But the thing which most of all portended the destruction that was to come upon them, so that it became plain even to their enemies, was that many vultures and also many other birds that devour corpses gathered above the heads of the conspirators only and gazed down upon them, screaming and screeching in a horrible and frightful manner.
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