Country, Signs are seen to presage, and Seers arise who foretell them_.
Whence it happens I know not, but it is seen from examples both ancient
and recent, that no grave calamity has ever befallen any city or
country which has not been foretold by vision, by augury, by portent,
or by some other Heaven-sent sign. And not to travel too far afield for
evidence of this, every one knows that long before the invasion of
Italy by Charles VIII. of France, his coming was foretold by the friar
Girolamo Savonarola; and how, throughout the whole of Tuscany, the
rumour ran that over Arezzo horsemen had been seen fighting in the air.
And who is there who has not heard that before the death of the elder
Lorenzo de’ Medici, the highest pinnacle of the cathedral was rent by a
thunderbolt, to the great injury of the building? Or who, again, but
knows that shortly before Piero Soderini, whom the people of Florence
had made gonfalonier for life, was deprived of his office and banished,
the palace itself was struck by lightning?
Other instances might be cited, which, not to be tedious, I shall omit,
and mention only a circumstance which Titus Livius tells us preceded
the invasion of the Gauls. For he relates how a certain plebeian named
Marcus Ceditius reported to the senate that as he passed by night along
the Via Nova, he heard a voice louder than mortal, bidding him warn the
magistrates that the Gauls were on their way to Rome.
The causes of such manifestations ought, I think, to be inquired into
and explained by some one who has a knowledge, which I have not, of
causes natural and supernatural. It may, however, be, as certain wise
men say, that the air is filled with intelligent beings, to whom it is
given to forecast future events; who, taking pity upon men, warn them
beforehand by these signs to prepare for what awaits them. Be this as
it may, certain it is that such warnings are given, and that always
after them new and strange disasters befall nations.