Tuesday, August 27, 2019
How Can They Keep from Laughing?
Cicero, On Divination 2.24.51 (tr. W.A. Falconer):
Jean-Léon Gérome, Les deux augures
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But indeed, that was quite a clever remark which Cato made many years ago: "I wonder," said he, "that a soothsayer doesn't laugh when he sees another soothsayer."Arthur Stanley Pease ad loc.:
vetus autem illud Catonis admodum scitum est, qui mirari se aiebat quod non rideret haruspex haruspicem cum vidisset.
For the remark cf. N.D. 1, 71: mirabile videtur quod non rideat haruspex cum haruspicem viderit (where the lack of ascription to Cato may indicate that the remark had become more or less proverbial). Similarly Diogenes the Cynic, according to Diog. 1. 6, 24: ὅταν (sc. ἴδῃ) ... ὀνειροκρίτας καὶ μάντεις καὶ τοὺς προσέχοντας τούτοις ... οὐδὲν ματαιότερον νομίζειν ἀνθρώπου; Voltaire, Essai sur les Moeurs, 31: "Mais qui fut celui qui inventa cet art (i.e., divination)? Ce fut le premier fripon qui rencontra un imbécile."
