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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;robinjojo, post: 4529257, member: 110226&quot;]On a prophecy sought as a young man, from Sibyl (a prophet), regarding Rome’s fate as well as his own, Claudius had this to say regarding the outcome of the Punic Wars:</p><p><br /></p><p><i>“Gradually, her face changed, the prophetic power overcame her, she struggled and gasped, and there was a rushing noise through all the galleries, doors banged, wings swished my face, the light vanished, and she uttered a Greek verse in the voice of God:</i></p><p><i><br /></i></p><p><i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; ‘Who groans beneath the Punic Curse</i></p><p><i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And strangles in the strings of purse,</i></p><p><i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Before she mends must sicken worse,</i></p><p><i><br /></i></p><p><i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Her living mouth shall breed blue flies, </i></p><p><i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And maggots creep about her eyes,</i></p><p><i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; No man shall mark the day she dies’</i></p><p><i><br /></i></p><p><i>“By the Punic Curse the Sibyl was referring plainly enough to the destruction of Carthage by us Romans. We have long been under a divine curse because of that.&nbsp; We swore friendship and protection to Carthage in the name of our principal gods, Apollo included, and then, jealous of her quick recovery from the disasters of the Second Punic War, we tricked her into fighting the Third Punic War and utterly destroyed her, massacring her inhabitants and sowing her fields with salt.&nbsp; ‘The strings of the purse’ are the chief instruments of this curse – a money-madness that has choked Rome ever since she destroyed her chief trade rival and made herself mistress of all the riches of the Mediterranean.&nbsp; With riches came sloth, greed, cruelty, dishonesty, cowardice, effeminacy, and every other un-Roman vice.”</i></p><p><i><br /></i></p><p>From I Claudius[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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