We receive many intimations from the foresight and presages of augurs and auspices; from oracles, prophecies, dreams, and prodigies; and it often happens that by these means events have proved happy to men, and imminent dangers have been avoided.

This knowledge, therefore--call it either a kind of transport, or an art, or a natural faculty--is certainly found only in men, and is a gift from the immortal Gods.

If these proofs, when taken separately, should make no impression upon your mind, yet, when collected together, they must certainly affect you.
Besides, the Gods not only provide for mankind universally, but for particular men.

You may bring this universality to gradually a smaller number, and again you may reduce that smaller number to individuals.
LXVI.

For if the reasons which I have given prove to all of us that the Gods take care of all men, in every country, in every part of the world separate from our continent, they take care of those who dwell on the same land with us, from east to west; and if they regard those who inhabit this kind of great island, which we call the globe of the earth, they have the like regard for those who possess the parts of this island--Europe, Asia, and Africa; and therefore they favor the parts of these parts, as Rome, Athens, Sparta, and Rhodes; and particular men of these cities, separate from the whole; as Curius, Fabricius, Coruncanius, in the war with Pyrrhus; in the first Punic war, Calatinus, Duillius, Metellus, Lutatius; in the second, Maximus, Marcellus, Africanus; after these, Paullus, Gracchus, Cato; and in our fathers' times, Scipio, Laelius.