C. gives the academic argument against necessity, agreeing so far with Epic.,

but he strongly condemns the doctrine of the declinatio atomorwm by which the latter endeavoured to disprove necessity, V. D. 1 69, 73, Fat. 22.
haec cui videantur: ‘such a philosophy as this which holds’,
sequitur : opp. to ewstitit primum.
qua tanta—colendi: ‘through which, if we had been willing to listen to you, we should have been so infected with superstition that we should have had to pay regard to soothsayers, augurs, fortune-tellers, seers, inter- preters of dreams’: har. (root ghar. hirae hillae ilia, yonu€, cf. Curtius and Vanitek) foretold the future from the appearance of the entrails in sacri- fices and from the phenomena of nature; aug. from the appearance and movements of animals, esp. from the flight of birds. These two were regarded as scientific modes of divination, in contradistinction to the un- scientific, uttered pawopér@ oropuatt, Such as the Sibylline prophecies, and hariolorum et vatum (on this word see Munro Lwer. 1 102) furibundas prae- dictiones, and dreams, cf. Div. 1 3, and Marquardt Rém. Staatsv. 111 pp. 90, 393 foll. On the meaning and etymology of the word superstitio see 11 72 n.
si vos audire vellemus. The Stoics strongly maintained the truth of divination, and urged the fact of its existence as one proof of the existence of the Gods, quorum enim interpretes sunt, eos ipsos esse certe necesse est.