relying on which prediction, the Velletrians both then, and several times
afterwards, made war upon the Roman people, to their own ruin. At last
it appeared by the event, that the omen had portended the elevation of
Augustus.

Julius Marathus informs us, that a few months before his birth, there
happened at Rome a prodigy, by which was signified that Nature was in
travail with a king for the Roman people; and that the senate, in alarm,
came to the resolution that no child born that year should be brought up;
but that those amongst them, whose wives were pregnant, to secure to
themselves a chance of that dignity, took care that the decree of the
senate should not be registered in the treasury.

I find in the theological books of Asclepiades the Mendesian [248], that
Atia, upon attending at midnight a religious solemnity in honour of
Apollo, when the rest of the matrons retired home, fell asleep on her
couch in the temple, and that a serpent immediately crept to her, and
soon after withdrew. She awaking upon it, purified herself, as usual
after the embraces of her husband; and instantly there appeared upon her
body a mark in the form of a serpent, which she never after could efface,
and which obliged her, during the subsequent part of her life, to decline
the use of the public baths. Augustus, it was added, was born in the
tenth month after, and for that reason was thought to be the son of
Apollo. The (139) same Atia, before her delivery, dreamed that her
bowels stretched to the stars, and expanded through the whole circuit of
heaven and earth. His father Octavius, likewise, dreamt that a sun-beam
issued from his wife's womb.

Upon the day he was born, the senate being engaged in a debate on
Catiline's conspiracy, and Octavius, in consequence of his wife's being