" They knew, as Livy expresses it, that it was best to fish
in troubled waters, where, speaking of a contagious distemper, which,
from the country villages, spread over the city, occasioned by an
extraordinary drought in the year of Rome 326, he observes how, at last,
it infected the mind,[124] by the management of those who lived in the
superstition of the people; so that nothing was to be seen or heard
except some new fangled ceremony or other in every corner. "The devil,"
as Bayle says, "who had a hopeful game on't, and saw superstition the
surest way to get himself worshipped under the name of the false gods,
in a hundred various ways, all criminal and abominable in the sight of
the sovereign Lord of heaven and earth, never failed, on the appearance
of any rare meteor, or uncommon star, to exert his imposing arts, and
make idolaters believe, they were the signs of divine wrath, and that
they were all undone unless they appeased their gods by sacrifices of
men and brute beasts."
Politicians have also lent a helping hand to give presages a reputation,
as an excellent scheme, either to intimidate the people, or to raise
their drooping spirits.
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