Note 74 — LIFE OF TIBERIUS GRACCHUS.

A cage, the Roman cavea. This was one of the modes of ascertaining the will of the gods. It was a firm belief among the nations of antiquity that the gods did by certain signs and tokens give men the opportunity of knowing their will. The determination of these signs was reduced to a system, which it was the duty of certain persons, augurs and others, to learn and to transmit. The careful reader will find many other notices of this matter in Plutarch and some in these notes. (See Sulla, c. 6, notes.)

P. Claudius Pulcher, who was consul B.C. 249, and in the command of the Roman fleet off Sicily, despised the omens. The fowls would not eat, which portended that his projected attack on the Carthaginians would be unfavourable; but Claudius said that if they would not eat, they should drink, and he pitched the sacred fowls into the sea. He lost most of his ships in the engagement that followed. (Cicero, De Natura Deorum, ii. 3.) The “birds” of Plutarch are “fowls,” “pulli.”