CAECINA  , the name of a distinguished

Etruscan family of Volaterrae . Graves have been discovered belonging to the family, whose name is still preserved in the river and hamlet of Cecina . AuLUS CAECINA, son of Aulus Caecina who was defended by Cicero (69 B.C.) 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) .