- Edition: Julius Caesar
Life of Caesar
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47
47XLVII.Caesar had many
Signs and tokens of Caesar's victory.
signs and tokens of victory before this battle, but the notablest of all other that happened to him, was in the city of Tralles. For in the temple of Victory, within the same city, there was an image of Caesar, and the earth all about it very hard of itself, and was paved besides with hard stone: and yet some say that there sprang up a palm hard by the base of the same image. In the city of Padua,
A strange tale of Cornelius an excellent pronosticator.
Caius Cornelius, an excellent soothsayer (a countryman and friend of Titus Livius the historiographer), was by chance at that time set to behold the flying of birds. He (as Livy reporteth) knew the very time when the battle began, and told them that were present, " Even now they give the onset on both sides, and both armies do meet at this instant." Then sitting down again, to consider of the birds, after he had bethought him of the signs, he suddenly rose up on his feet, and cried out as a man possessed with some spirit: " O Caesar, the victory is thine." Every man wondering to see him, he took the crown he had on his head, and made an oath that he would never put it on again, till the event of his prediction had proved his art true. Livy testifieth that it came so to pass.