Even after successful auspices and a victorious campaign, secure and free from the danger of a now defeated enemy, we dread the change of the goddess at sea or entering a narrow mountain pass, whilst conveying home our victorious army, vast spoils, and a captive king. We never act without first taking the auspices, in public and private matters, and with crimsoned hands and smoke from the altars in our eyes we give the utmost importance to the omens our augurs take from them, just as Romulus himself did, on the first day of our city’s existence. But the divine, Fortuna herself, we always hold dread of her as faithless and inconstant and, for the very reason that in war she has been as a favourable gale in all our affairs to this point, and we still expect some change and reflux. We have never yet feared anything in the realm of men.