Such accounts, as Cicero observes, true or false, are too rare, and referable to casual circumstances, to authorise any idea of inspiration *.

Cicero, we are told, during his flight from Rome, being at Atma, imagined that he beheld in his sleep Caius Marius, preceded by the fasces bound with laurel, who encouraged him on his dejection at being obliged to leave bis country, and consigned him to the care of a lictor, who was instructed to place him in the monument of Marius, where, it was said, was the hope of a better fortune. Sallust, on hearing the dream, is related to have foretold a speedy return to Cicero, which was soon after-Wards effected by an unanimous decree of the senate, passed in the Marian Temple of Jove. The local correspondence, if correctly stated, was remarkable: Cicero, however, did not think it necessary to have recourse to any superoatural agency on this occasion, but con-ceived that the dream might be the production of a mind engaged in meditation on the fate and fortitude of Marius, with application, we may conceive, to the circumstances of his own fortune *.

* De Divin. L. ii. §. 68. Diod. Sicul. L. xvii. p. 575 Q, Curtius, L. ix. C. 27.

There sure also other dreams; which, how-ever their circumstances might correspond with historical events that afterwards happened, can have no claim to be considered as inspired, since they might have produced their own accomplishment, being casual and vague, and verified by the operation of devotion, solicitude, or fear.

An instance mentioned by Cicero maybe thus explained: Decius, the first consul of his family, in consequence of a dream, in which victory was promised to the army whose commander should devote himself to death, and in which he appeared to fall with great glory in the midst of his enemies, rushed to de~ struction three years after in an engagement with the Latins, a victim to his superstitions credulity and rashness *.

* Valeriu Maxim. L. I. C.7.

Tacitus thinks it necessary to apologize for relating, that Curtius Rufus, when attending on a questor, who had obtained a department in Africa, was addressed in the retirement of a deserted portico at Adrimetum, in the midst of the day, by a female figure of supernatural appearance, who declared to him that he should come as consul into that province, which afterwards happened agreeably to the pretended prediction †.

There are some other dreams described in ancient accounts, which may be considered as the work of a creative fancy, occupied with anxiety on great events.

* De Divin. L. i.

‡ Tacit. Aannl. L. ii. C.21.

Hannibal, we are told by Cicero, after a Grecian historian, dreamed, on the taking of Saguntum, that he was carried by Jupiter into the council of the gods, and there commanded by him to carry war into Italy: one of the heavenly council was appointed as a conductor in the expedition. Hannibal, on his march, was directed by his guide not to look back; but, prompted by human curiosity to disregard the instruction, he turned and beheld an horrible monster enfolded by serpents, and followed by a tremendous storm and darkness, which, wherever he proceeded, laid every thing waste. On inquiry Hannibal was informed, that the monster represented the devastation of Italy, but was directed to proceed, regardless of the effects of his march. What was this but a picture which might naturally present itself to the mind of the Carthaginians, pledged by a sacred oath to carry devastation into Italy *?

* Cicero de Divin. Liv. L. xxi. §. 22.

It would be well if conquerors in general would look to the horrors which must follow in the track of their ambition: it might check some at least in their destructive course.

When Cassius and Brutus were about to pass from Asia into Europe, in the dead of the night, while the moon reflected a feeble light on the silent camps, a black and horrible spectre is said to have appeared to Brutus, who sat musing in his tent concerning the event of the war, with a taper nearly extinguished placed before him. Brutus, with a firm tone, demanded what, either man or god, he was. The spirit answered, "Brutus, I am thy evil Genius; thou shalt see me again at Philippi." Brutus replied, "I will see thee there." The spirit accordingly re-appeared* on the plains of Philippi the night before the last battle. The morning after the first vision, Brutus related to Cassius what he had seen, and expounded to him from the doctrine of the Epicureaus what was to be thought of such spectres *.

Cassius is reported to have seen in the same battle the figure of Julius Caesar on horseback preparing to strike him., which terrified him to flight and suicide: but these and other accounts of apparitions, though they relate to the belief in preternatural interpositions, do not strictly come within the subject of our discussion, and we shall therefore wave the consi. deration of them.

The dream of Xenophon, in which he img-gined that the fetters with which he was bound spontaneously broke, and which encouraged the troops of Cyrus when about to pass a river on the borders of Armenia, in defiance of the enemies, who harassed their retreat and obstructed their progress, might hare been the result of solicitude, or the contrivance of policy. Xenophou, however, appears to have been impressed with a greater reverence for the existing superstitions than might have been expected from a disciple of Socrates.

* Pletarch. in Brut. Lips, Mon. L. i. C. 5. p. 75.

Sylla, before his successful engagement with Marius, pretended to dream that he received from Pallas a thunder-bolt, the emblem of victory; and afterwards, in the same spirit, professed to have dreamed the night before he defeated the son of Marius, that he had seen him in a dream admonished by his father to avoid an action.

A dream of like nature is attributed to Judas Maccabaeus, who, when about to engage with inferior forces the army of Demetrius, king of Syria, under the command of Nicanor, is related in the second book of Maccabees, a work of doubtful authority, to have beholden the high priest Onias, who was then dead, praying to God for the Jewish nation, and afterwards Jeremiah the prophet presenting him with a golden sword of conquest. In the confidence of the dream he is stated to have defeated the Syrians, with a slaughter of thirty and five thousand men *.

Pompey and Caesar each dreamed before, their final conflict, that he dedicated a temple to Venus, the victorious. The blind and lame men who applied to Vespasian at Alexandria, and are reported to have been miraculously cured by him, pretended to have been admonished in a dream by the god Serapis to address themselves to the emperor. The cure and the dreams were probably equally contrived to do honour to Vespasian †, whose elevation Jose-phus also professes to have predicted ‡.

* Fulgosius. 2 Maccab. xv. 12.

† De Bell. Jud L. iii. viii. et de Vit. §. 42. et Sueton. Vespas. C. 5.

Onomarchus, who excited the Phocaeans to persevere in maintaining the possession of the treasury of Delphi, was encouraged in his design by a dream, in which the brazen Colossus, dedicated by the Amphyctions to Apollo, had by his hands been made higher and larger, which he considered as figurative of his exploits; but Diodorus Siculus, judging by the event, informs us, that it signified, that the mulct imposed by the Amphyctions upon the Phocaeans for their sacrilege would be much advanced through Onomarchus; which, indeed, was as probable as the other *.

* Diod. Sic. L. xvi C. 7.