Secular The Ancient world saw the technique of vaticinium ex eventu used by a wide variety of figures, from Pindar and Herodotus to Horace and Virgil. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri includes a number of such prophecies of Dante's own exile from Florence. In Jerusalem Delivered, Torquato Tasso uses the vaticinium ex eventu trope in presaging the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus: "Un uom de la Liguria avrà ardimento / a l'incognito corso esporsi in prima" References in the late correspondence of Virginia Woolf to "how I love this savage medieval water [...] and myself so eliminated" are sometimes taken as presaging her suicide by drowning a few months later: the danger of vaticinium ex eventu has however also been observed. See also Notes References Vaticinium ex eventu (or post eventum) Dictionary of the Bible Prophecy Latin religious words and phrases Cognitive biases Biblical criticism Historicity of the Bible