Note 12 — Chapter VI
Reading edition
Lucan gives a fine enumeration of such prodigies witnessed in the Roman capital in a similar excitement. (Pharsalia, lib. 1, v. 523, et seq.) Poor human nature is much the same everywhere. Machiavelli has thought the subject worthy of a separate chapter in his Discourses. The philosopher even intimates a belief in the existence of beneficent intelligences who send these portents as a sort of premonitories, to warn mankind of the coming tempest. Discorsi sopra Tito Livio, lib. 1, cap. 56.