an ancient kind of divination performed by pitching on a passage of a poet at hazard, and reckoning on it as a prediction of what was to come to pass. There were various ways of practising this rhapsodomancy. Sometimes they wrote several papers or sentences of a poet on so many pieces of wood, paper, or the like, shook them together in an urn, and drew out one, which was accounted the lot. Sometimes they cast dice on a table, whereon verses were written, and that upon which the die lodged contained the prediction. A third manner was by opening a book, and pitching on some verse at first sight. This method they particularly called the sortes Prenestinae; and afterwards, according to the poet, made use of sortes Homericus, sortes Virgiliana, &c.