—— “Agimus, prô Jupiter, inquit,
Ante rates causam, et mecum confertur Ulysses!”
There are two lines in the Philoctetes, which present a fine image of discomfort and desolation—
“Contempla hanc sedem, in qua ego novem hiemes, saxo stratus, pertuli,
Ubi horrifer aquilonis stridor gelidas molitur nives[350].”
Most of the plays of Attius, as we have seen, were taken from the Greek tragedians. Two of them, however, the Brutus and the Decius, hinged on Roman subjects, and were both probably written in compliment to the family of his patron, Decius Brutus. The subject of the former was the expulsion of the Tarquins: but the only passage of it extant, is the dream of Tarquin, and its interpretation, which have been preserved by Cicero in his work De Divinatione. Tarquin’s dream was, that he had been overthrown by a ram which a shepherd had presented to him, and that while lying wounded on his back, he had looked up to the sky, and observed that the sun, having changed his course, was journeying from west to east. The first part of this dream being interpreted, was a warning, that he would be expelled from his kingdom by one whom he accounted as stupid as a sheep; and the solar phenomenon portended a popular change in the government. The interpreter adds, that such strange dreams could not have occurred without the purpose of some special manifestation, but that no attention need be paid to those which merely present to us the daily transactions of life—
“Nam quæ in vitâ usurpant homines, cogitant, curant, vident,
Quæque agunt vigilantes, agitantque, ea si cui in somno accidunt.
Minus mirum est ——”
In his tragedies, indeed, Attius rather shows a contempt for dreams, and prodigies, and the science of augury—