For example: our augurs and the Etrurian haruspices saw the truth of their art established when P.Scipio and C.Figulus were consuls; for as Tiberius Gracchus, who was a second time consul, wished to proceed to a fresh election, the first Rogator,[117] as he was collecting the suffrages, fell down dead on the spot.

Gracchus nevertheless went on with the assembly, but perceiving that this accident had a religious influence on the people, he brought the affair before the senate.

The senate thought fit to refer it to those who usually took cognizance of such things.

The haruspices were called, and declared that the man who had acted as Rogator of the assembly had no right to do so; to which, as I have heard my father say, he replied with great warmth, Have I no right, who am consul, and augur, and favored by the Auspicia?
And shall you, who are Tuscans and Barbarians, pretend that you have authority over the Roman Auspicia, and a right to give judgment in matters respecting the formality of our assemblies?
Therefore, he then commanded them to withdraw; but not long afterward he wrote from his province[118] to the college of augurs, acknowledging that in reading the books[119] he remembered that he had illegally chosen a place for his tent in the gardens of Scipio, and had afterward entered the Pomoerium, in order to hold a senate, but that in repassing the same Pomoerium he had forgotten to take the auspices; and that, therefore, the consuls had been created informally.

The augurs laid the case before the senate.