Roman Augury: Reading the Will of the Gods
The augurs were among the most important religious officials in Rome, and their function was specific: they observed and interpreted signs — auspices — that indicated whether the gods approved of a proposed action. Before a general led his army into battle, before a magistrate held a public assembly, before a colony was founded or a treaty ratified, the auspices were taken. A favorable sign meant the action could proceed. An unfavorable sign meant it could not — at least not on that day, in that form. The political implications of this system were considerable, and the Romans who operated it were not naive about the opportunities it created.
The signs that augurs read were organized into categories. The most important were the flight and behavior of birds: their direction of movement, whether they flew to the right or left of the observer, whether they called, and what species they were. The eagle and the vulture were among the most significant; certain crows and ravens had their own meanings. The behavior of the sacred chickens — pullarii, kept for the purpose — was a particularly common source of auspices in military contexts. The chickens’ willingness or refusal to eat grain thrown before them indicated favorable or unfavorable conditions. A commander who received an unfavorable auspice from reluctant chickens before a naval engagement could either delay or, if the military or political situation made delay impossible, could engage anyway and accept the religious and political consequences.
The augural college — the collegium augurum — was one of Rome’s four major priestly colleges, and membership was for life, politically prestigious, and held by senior senators. Cicero was an augur. Julius Caesar was pontifex maximus and held other priestly offices. The overlap between religious and political office in Rome was not accidental; it reflected the Roman understanding that the gods’ favor was relevant to all public actions, and that the men responsible for those actions should have direct institutional roles in determining whether divine approval was present. The augur at a public assembly was not a separate religious authority commenting on the political process from outside; he was embedded in it, with the authority to suspend proceedings on religious grounds.
The question of how literally Romans believed in augury has occupied scholars for a long time, partly because Cicero himself, a member of the augural college, wrote a treatise — De Divinatione — arguing philosophically that divination was irrational and that the educated person should not credit it. He reconciled this position with his augural membership by noting that the institution had political and social value regardless of its theological truth: the ability to suspend assemblies and military actions on religious grounds provided a checking mechanism that was useful independent of whether the gods were actually communicating through bird flight. This is a sophisticated argument, and it was made by a man embedded in the system he was analyzing, which gives it a particular credibility.
The potential for political manipulation was obvious and was used. The right to take the auspices could be used to delay an opponent’s legislation, to disrupt elections, to postpone military engagements on grounds of religious irregularity. The augural announcement that the auspices were unfavorable — obnuntiatio — was a weapon in the political toolkit of the late Republic, deployed by senators who had few other tools left against opponents with overwhelming popular and military support. Caesar’s opponents used it against his legislation; he and his successors simply overrode it, which was the kind of constitutional norm violation that the late Republic specialized in and that made the institution increasingly meaningless as a check.
The interpretation of prodigies — extraordinary events understood as divine warnings — was a related but distinct function, handled by a board of augurs and other specialists called the haruspices, who used Etruscan techniques involving the examination of animal livers. When a two-headed calf was born, when lightning struck a temple, when locusts appeared, when the Tiber flooded in unusual ways — these events required interpretation and ritual response. The state maintained a Sibylline Books — a collection of oracular prophecies — whose consultation was prescribed for serious prodigies, under the supervision of a priestly board. The consultation would produce specific religious remedies — particular sacrifices, games, processions — that would address the divine displeasure indicated by the prodigy.
The whole system reflected a Roman religious epistemology that was less interested in theology than in procedure. The question was not whether the gods existed or what their ultimate nature was — Romans held a variety of views on these questions — but whether the proper ritual relationship between the human and divine communities had been maintained. Augury and divination were the information channel in this relationship: tools for monitoring the gods’ disposition and adjusting human behavior accordingly. The information they provided was uncertain and interpretable, and the experts who interpreted it had interests of their own. This did not make the system hypocritical — it made it human, which is what religious institutions reliably are.