[656] Val. Max. i. 5. 3 and 4; Cic. de Div. i. 16. 29; Livy, Epit. xix.
[657] The locus classicus is Livy xxi. 63.
[658] Cic. de Div. ii. 36. 77. I find an illustration of this effect of lightning in Major Bruce's Twenty Years in the Himalaya, p. 130: "Directly the ice-axes begin to hum (in a storm) they should be put away."
[659] He notices it in connection with the war only in iii. 112. 6, after the battle of Cannae: a striking passage, but cast in general language.
[660] Livy xxi. 62 foll. Wissowa comments on this passage in R.K. p. 223.
[661] See the author's Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero, p. 28 foll.
[662] The rule seems to have been that no prodigia were accepted, and procurata by the authorities, which were announced from beyond the ager Romanus. See Mommsen in O. Jahn's edition of the Periochae of Livy's books, and of Iulius Obsequens, preface, p. xviii. But this does not appear from the records of this war; and, at any rate, the religious panic was Italian as well as Roman.
[663] Red sand still occasionally falls in Italy, brought by a sirocco from the Sahara, and this accounts for the prodigium, "pluit sanguine," which is often met with. I have a record of it in the Daily Mail of March 11, 1901. But the lapides were probably of volcanic origin.
[664] Wissowa, R.K. p. 328.
[665] This must have been a special performance of the yearly Amburbium, of which unluckily we known hardly anything (Wissowa, R.K. 130).