Aulus Caecina Severus
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Aulus Caecina, son of Aulus Caecina who was defended by Cicero (69 BC) in a speech still extant, took the side of Pompey in the civil wars, and published a violent tirade against Caesar, for which he was banished.
He recanted in a work called Querelae, and by the intercession of his friends, above all, of Cicero, obtained pardon from Caesar. Caecina was regarded as an important authority on the Etruscan system of divination (Etrusca Disciplina), which he endeavoured to place on a scientific footing by harmonizing its theories with the doctrines of the Stoics.
Considerable fragments of his work (dealing with lightning) are to be found in Seneca (Naturales Quaestiones, ii. 31-49). Caecina was on intimate terms with Cicero, who speaks of him as a gifted and eloquent man and was no doubt considerably indebted to him in his own treatise De Divinatione. Some of their correspondence is preserved in Cicero's letters (Ad Fam. vi. 5-8; see also ix. and xiii. 66).
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
