142 Ulisse Aldrovandi

can be read in his writings. Finally, there was that prodigious fish marked with a human head, which was caught in the Vistula River of Poland in the year 1623, as we have learned from a report printed in Krakow.

Now we must discuss other body parts. Indeed, while Vespasian was dining, a human hand was brought into the dining room and placed under the table; from this, the diviners sensed that the power of the state would one day fall to him. Similarly, in the year 559 BC, King Belshazzar—during a grand banquet with his high-ranking guests amidst elegant and sumptuous delicacies—beheld a human hand writing on the surface of the wall. This prodigy foretold the King's death, as is read in the Holy Bible in the Book of Daniel.

Antiquity also considered it a bad omen to stub one's foot. For this reason, on the day Gaius Gracchus was overwhelmed by civil sedition, he struck the threshold with his foot so hard as he was leaving his house that a considerable amount of blood flowed from the wound. Likewise, when the son of Crassus was about to go to battle against the Parthians, he stumbled so badly that he was forced to fall, and the campaign ended in disaster, as Alexander ab Alexandro left recorded in his writings.

The Prodigy of the Two Boys

Concerning human