12 June 44 BCE: To Atticus (at Rome) from Cicero (at Astura?)
Cicero is having a lovely time listening to frogs practicing oratory
I’m telling you, this whole area is lovely; hidden away for sure, and free from any onlookers if one wishes to write anything. But (I’m not sure how) ‘home is most dear,’ and so my feet are leading me back to Tusculum. And anyway, I feel one would quickly have had enough of this landscape-painting of a coastline. For my part, I am also afraid of rain, if my prognostics are correct—for the frogs are practising oratory.1 Please let me know where I can see Brutus, and on what day.
Read Ad Atticum 15.16a in Latin here | Check the glossary here
Cicero writes about using the prophetic abilities of frogs (frognostication?) to predict the weather in his work On Divination: ‘Who could suppose that frogs had this foresight? And yet they do have by nature some faculty of premonition, clear enough of itself, but too dark for human comprehension.’ (trans. W.A. Falconer.)
enchanted by frognostication