"These two beliefs, the belief that divine will could be ascertained and the belief that the gods sent signs in the form of extraordinary phenomena, were an integral part of the Roman religion." -R. M. Ogilvie
Indeed there is nothing more Roman than the art and practice of divination. The Romans believed that the gods would contact men at any given moment in time to communicate with them and to help them on their journey. The practices that are used for divination are various in their identity, some stemming from the most precise forms, while others could be considered educated guess work. The divination practices of ancient Rome, like the religion itself, were influenced by outside cultures. The divination "...stems largely from Etruscan practices and theories- as the ancients theselves said it did". Divination itself is defined as "The belief that natural phenomena reveal the will of the gods or fortells the future..." These beliefs are as old as time itself it seems, for one would have a great dela of difficulty in their attempts to find any archaic religion that does not possess some sort of divination practice.
In the ancient Roman world there are several types of divination practices. All in one form or another revolve around the natural world; the looking at it and the attempt to find answers there. Some would come by suprise, an insight from the gods that one did not seek out, but simply came to them. The other types come from those who would attempt to understand the will of the gods.
The most famous type of divination is an omen. An omen is simple the divine making themselves known through some for or another, mostly through nature. Dreams, prodigies, asupices, chance remarks, lightning signs, and man other things fall under this category. Dreams, in fact, are a type of omen that is still looked upon as having worth today. If one dreams about something or more importantly someone they know, a lot of the time, despite what the belief is of the individual religiously, one would give that person a call to see if they were alright. Dreams are also taken quite seriously in the "scientific" world of psychotherapy. This is only a small portion of the importance that the Romans placed upon their dreams.
One of the more important types of omens that was the most unique to interpret and give attention to was that of "chance remarks". A chance of remark would be somethat that is said, almost like a "Freudian Slip", that was not the thing that one meant to say, but it simply "came out." This was given a great deal of importance because it was almost as if the gods were speaking for that person.
Even though chances of remarks were highly popular the form of divination that is always mentioned in any text and was used within the government itself at times of elections was that of the auspice. The auspice was "...an essential requirement before any public action was initiated." The auspice was taken by a public offical known as the magistrates and the auspice itself comes form the Latin auspicium which means the "observation of birds." There are two types of auspices: auspices and auguries. Auspices were signs that were requested from the gods. That is to say that these were guestions that were asked to the gods or directed towards them that received, hopefuly, some sort of answer. Auguries, on the other hand, were declared by the gods without any questions being asked; they came into being on their own accord.
These signs were very complicated and required some sort of interpretation. As one author notes, "The bewildering variety of signs and portents needed authoritative interpretation." The authoritative interpretation came from the augurs and the magistrates who held the supreme authority as to what the auspice itself meant. They were also the supreme authority to declare f something was indeed an omen of this sort or not and if that was the case, they would be the one to decide if one should consult the Sibylline books or foreign oracles (such as the Greek oracle of Delphi) or not. It should be noted that foreign oracles were consulted several times in order to help provide answers when none could be provided for by the Sibylline books. For example, in Titus Livy's The War With Hannibal, Livy states that "...Quintus Fabius Pictor returned to Rome from his mission to Delphi. He read from a written paper the answr of the oracle which contained the names of the gods to whom prayer was to be offered and in what form."
Prodigies were "believed to annouce some important event that was either fortunate or unfortunate". Their authority and decleration came, like the auspices, from the authority of the magistrate. The prodigy itself "...consisted in some disaster that punished the Roman people: A natural catastrophe, an epidemic, a defeat- all could be seen as manifestations of divine wrath." The prodicy was so important because it was something that showed the "true" nature of the divine communicating to makind with devestating resluts most of the time. If the signs were seen as exceptionally dangerous, they were shown to the Senate at the new year and they were asked to offer sacrifice in order to prevent anything of devestating magnitude from happening.
Hauspice is something that is exceptionally interesting and it comes directly from the Etruscans. Hauspice itself is an act that comes from the reading of entrails of a sacrifice. (The sacrifice was always an animal and goats and lambs were the most common.) In Titus Livy, there is a description of the hauspice, which was the examination of the liver of an animal to see if it things look favorable. A great deal of the time the hauspice was taken before going to battle or war, and if the liver was not tainted then it was seen as a sign of victiory. If the liver was tainted however, then the outcome did not look as favorable and caution was usually taken, or at times the sign would be ignored.
Hauspices were not just the title of the action, but also the people who examined it and they were not limited to simply the examniation of livers. "...they were also appraoched for their opinions on other divine manifestations such as earth quakes." These would also be the individuals that one would consult for their opinion for the interpretation of lightning. Lightning came in various forms in the ancient world according to one author there, "...are four or five types of thunderbolts known to Roman diviners."
It should be noted as well that even though many of these forms of diviniation were done on the public scale, that does not prevent the from being done in private life as well. Indeed the Senate and generals were not the only ones to consult diviners. Individuals who wanted to see, for example, how they would fair if they were elected to high office or how a prodigy affected their own household, would consult a diviner. Titus Livy's The War with Hannibal records exceptionally long lists of various prodigies that people undoubtedly sent to Rome to be consulted by the diviners and to see if there was some sense of validity to them. Divination was a practice that went from the poorest slave and peasant to the emperor himself' it was a practice embraced by everyone.
Stay tuned for Part 3!!
