anthropological inquiry still stands in need of a thorough scientific
examination. At present it seems to puzzle anthropologists;[597] and the
reason probably is that the material for studying it inductively has not
as yet been collected and sifted. Strange to say, it does not appear in
the index to Dr. Westermarck's great work, which I have so often quoted:
it is hardly to be found even in the _Golden Bough_: nor can I find a
thoroughgoing treatment of it in any other books about the early
history of mankind. And any sort of guesswork under these circumstances
only increases our difficulties. Some years ago the great German
philosophical lawyer, von Jhering, in an interesting work called the
_Evolution of the Aryan_, made some most ingenious attempts to explain
the origin of Roman divination. He fancied that the practice of
examining the entrails of a victim, for example, began in the course of
Aryan migration, because when you encamped in a new region you would
catch and kill some of the native cattle in order to see whether they
were wholesome enough to tempt you to stay.[598] Again, the study of the
flight of birds was prompted by the desire to get information about the
mountain passes and the course of great rivers; and this study grew into
an elaborate art as the leader of the host, the prototype of the Roman
augur, gained experience by constant observation from elevated
ground.[599] Such a theory as this last might be worth something if it
were based upon known facts; as it is, it is only most ingenious
guesswork. This great legal writer did not know, as we do now, that
divination by both these methods is found all over the world, and cannot
be explained by any supposed needs of migrating Aryans.
Whatever be the origin of the several forms of divination, the object of
the practice in ancient Italy and Greece is beyond doubt--to find out
whether the Power with whom you wish to be in right relation is
favourable to certain human operations, or willing to aid in removing
certain forms of human suffering. According to our definition, it was a
part of religion, whether or no it belonged originally to magic. It was
a practical expression of that doubt or anxiety to which I believe the
Romans attached the word _religio_. In the agricultural period it must
have been specially useful and even inevitable,[600] because the tiller
of the soil is always in need of knowledge as to the best times and
seasons for his operations, and his out-of-door life gives him constant
opportunity of observing natural phenomena, _diosemeia_, signs from
heaven, and the utterances and movements of birds and other animals. It
is interesting to reflect that these last may often be of real service
in foretelling the weather, which is so important to the farmer. As I
write this on a December day I recall the fact that I have myself within
the last week successfully foretold a spell of cold after observing a
great arrival of winter thrushes from the north. This particular branch
of augury is, in fact, neither so inadequate nor so absurd as most
others. Von Jhering may turn out to be right in his notion that at least
some forms of divination have their origin in practical needs and in the
skill of uncivilised man in discerning the signs of the weather--a skill
which it is well to remember far exceeds that of the house-dweller of
modern civilisation. But with the growth of the City-state and the
habits of life in a town, these early instincts and methods of the
agriculturist came to be caught up into a system of religious practice,
adapted to the conditions of civil and political existence; thus they
gradually lost their original meaning and such real value as they ever
possessed. I have pointed out that the Roman festivals and the ritual of
the oldest calendar gradually got out of relation with the agricultural
life in which they for the most part originated:[601] so it was with
divination, which in the hands of the State authorities became
formalised into a set of rules for ascertaining the good-will of the
gods, and obtaining their sanction for the operations of the community,
which had no scientific basis whatever, no relation to truth and fact.
Of all the methods for putting yourself in right relation with the
Power, this was the least valuable, and indeed the most harmful; it came
in course of time to be a positive obstacle to efficiency and freedom of
action, it wasted valuable time, and it often served as the means of
promoting private ends to the detriment of the public interest.
Before I go on to consider the development of the highly formalised
system of public divination, let me clear the ground by a few remarks
about such forms of the practice as were not sanctioned by the State.
That these existed throughout Roman history there is no doubt, as they
existed in Greece, among the Jews, and elsewhere in the East, alongside
of the advanced and organised methods of official and authorised
experts.
Our information about private divination is scattered about in Roman
literature, and even when brought together there is not a great deal of
it. What is prominent both in Roman literature and Roman history is the
divination authorised by the State and systematised by its authorities;
even in Cicero's treatise _de Divinatione_, though the subject-matter is
of a general kind, drawn from Greece as well as Rome, it is, I think,
apart from philosophical questions, chiefly the art of augurs and
haruspices that interests the writer, who was himself an augur when he
wrote it. In Greek literature exactly the opposite is the case; there we
hear little of State-authorised divination, and a great deal of
wandering soothsayers, soothsaying families, and oracles which (except
at Delphi) were not under the direct control of a City-state.[602] The
methods of divination are much the same in both peninsulas, and indeed
vary little all the world over; the difference lies simply in
this,--that at Rome the adoption and systematisation by the State of
certain methods, especially those which dealt with birds and lightning,
had the effect of discrediting, if not excluding, an immense amount of
private practice of this kind. I mean that if the State strongly
sanctions some forms of divination, working them by its own officials,
it casts a shadow of discredit over the rest. As the _ius divinum_
tended to exclude magic and the barbarous in ritual, so did the _ius
augurale_, which was a part of it, exclude the quack in divination. And
in this particular department of human delusion the result may be said
to have been happy; for though divination belongs to religion as having
survived from an earlier stage into a religious one, yet it is the least
valuable, the least fruitful, part of it.[603] True, the augural
systematisation, as we shall see, had a sinister effect on political
progress; but even there the very emptiness and absurdity of the whole
business helped to bring contempt on it, and, as Cicero tells us in a
well-known passage, even old Cato declared that he could not imagine why
a _haruspex_ did not laugh when he met a brother of the craft.[604] In
Greece, on the contrary, it might, I believe, be shown that the absence
of systematisation by the State only served to prolong the credit and
influence of the professional quack.
Greece was at all periods full of these quacks; did the sham prophet
exist at Rome in the period we have now under review? Later on the
Oriental soothsayer found his way there; of these _Chaldaei_ and
_mathematici_ I shall have a word to say in another lecture, and we
shall see how the State authorities made occasional attempts to exclude
them. Of the _frantic_ type of diviner, the [Greek: entheos], so common
in Greece, we hear nothing in the sober Roman annals; the idea of a
human being "possessed by a spirit of divination" seems foreign to the
Roman character.[605] The only soothsayer, so far as I know, who appears
in Roman legend in a private capacity is that Attus Navius who gave
Tarquinius Priscus the benefit of his knowledge; and he is represented
as a respectable Sabine, and his art as an augural one learnt from the
Etruscans.[606] There are, indeed, ancient traces of a prophetic art at
Rome, but, as the historian of divination has well observed, they are
all connected not with human beings, but with divinities, a fact which
explains the Latin word _divinatio_.[607] To take what is perhaps the
best example, the ancient deity Carmenta, who had a flamen and a double
festival in the month of January, may very probably represent some dim
tradition of a _numen_ at whose shrine women might gain some knowledge
as to their fortunes in childbirth, just as outside Rome, at Praeneste
and Antium, Fortuna seems to have had this gift in historical
times.[608] So St. Augustine interpreted Carmenta,[609] probably
following Varro; and to Virgil she was the "_vates fatidica_, cecinit
quae prima futuros Aeneadas magnos et nobile Pallanteum."
But Carmenta, Picus, Faunus, are dim mythical figures which for us can
have no bearing on Roman religious experience; it would be more to the
point to ask what was the original meaning and history of the word
_vates_, if the question were answerable in the absence of an early
Roman literature. All we can say about this is that this word had, as a
rule, a certain dignity about it, which enabled it eventually to stand
for a poet, and that it rarely has a sinister sense, unless accompanied
by some adjective specially used in order to give it.[610] The real word
for a quack is _hariolus_, and the fact that it is comparatively rare
suggests that the character it expresses was not a common one. It occurs
here and there in fragments of old plays, where, unluckily, we cannot be
quite sure whether it represents a Greek or a Latin idea. The following
lines from the Telamo of Ennius shows us the _hariolus_, as well as the
word _vates_ with a discreditable adjective attached:
sed superstitiosi vates impudentesque harioli
aut inertes, aut insani, aut quibus egestas imperat,
qui sibi semitam non sapiunt, alteri monstrant viam,
quibu' divitias pollicentur, ab iis drachmam ipsi petunt.[611]
A more satisfactory bit of evidence as to the existence of the quack in
the second century B.C., when Greece and the East were beginning to pour
their unauthorised religionists into Italy, is the interesting passage
in old Cato's book on agriculture, in which he urges that the bailiff of
an estate should not be permitted to consult either a _haruspex_,
_augur_, _hariolus_, or _Chaldaeus_.[612] But on the whole, such little
evidence as we possess seems to confirm the view I hazarded just now,
that the overwhelming prestige of State authority at Rome discouraged
and discredited the quack diviner both in public and private life. His
work in private life was largely that of fortune-telling, of foretelling
the future in one sense or another; and this was exactly what the State
authorities never did and never countenanced, at any rate until the
stress of the Hannibalic war, and then only in a very limited sense.
Their object was a strictly religious one, to get the sanction of the
divine members of the community for the undertakings of the human ones.
Even the so-called Sibylline oracles, as we saw, were not prophecies;
and the augural art never provided an answer to the question, "What is
going to happen?" but only to that much more religious one, "Are the
deities willing that we should do this or that?"[613]
But before I leave the subject of private divination, I must note that
there was a department of it which may be called legitimate, as
distinguished from that of the quack. I mean the _auspicia_ of the
family religion, and also the comparatively harmless folklore about
omens of all sorts and kinds.
Naturally we have little information about legitimate _auspicia_ in the
life of the family; but we have seen that the religious instinct of the
Roman forbade him to face any important undertaking or crisis without
making sure of the sanction of the _numina_ concerned, and among the
methods of insurance (if I may use a convenient word) the _auspicia_
must have had a place from the earliest times. No important thing was
done, says Cicero in the _de Divinatione_, "nisi auspicato, ne privatim
quidem."[614] Valerius Maximus says the same in so many words, and some
other evidence has been collected by De Marchi in his work on the
private religion of the Romans.[615] But only in the case of marriage do
we hear of _auspicia_ in historical times, and even there they seem to
have degenerated into a mere form. "Auspices nuptiarum, re omissa, nomen
tantum tenent"--so Cicero wrote of his own time;[616] he seems to be
thinking of augury by means of birds, for he adds, "nam ut nunc extis
sic tunc avibus magnae res impetrari solebant." As we have already seen,
the object of the examination of a victim's entrails was simply to
ascertain its fitness to be offered; but by Cicero's time the Etruscan
art of divination by this method must have penetrated into private life.
I think we may conjecture that in the life of the family on the land the
_auspicia_, as the word itself implies, were worked chiefly by
observation of birds. Nigidius Figulus, the learned mystic of Cicero's
time, wrote a book, _de Augurio Privato_, of which one fragment survives
which has to do with this kind of divination, and with the distinction
between omens from birds seen on the right or left, and from high or low
flyers.[617] In the familiar ode of Horace beginning, "Impios parrae
recinentis omen,"[618] the _corvus_ and _cornix_ are mentioned besides
the _parra_, and in that wholesome old out-of-door life of the farm, as
I said just now, there was a certain basis of truth and fact in the
observation of such presages. But Horace mentions other animals, wolf,
fox, and snake, and some at least of the folklore about omens which is
to be found in Pliny's descriptions of animals may help us to appreciate
the nature of the old Roman ideas on this subject. The tiller of the
land and the shepherd on the uplands used their eyes and ears, not
wholly without advantage to themselves; but in the life of the city such
observation became gradually formal and meaningless, and degenerated
into the superstition reflected in Horace's ode. I must parenthetically
confess to a personal feeling of regret that this people, who in their
early days had good opportunities, made little or no contribution to the
knowledge of animals and their habits.[619] But I must pass on to the
more important subject of divination as developed and formalised by the
authorities of the State.
In explaining the ritual of the _ius divinum_ I laid stress on the fact
that its main object was to maintain the _pax deorum_, the right
relation between the divine and human citizens.[620] To make this _pax_
secure, it was necessary that in every public act the good-will of the
gods should be ascertained by obtaining favourable auspices--it must be
done _auspicato_. To take the first illustration that occurs, Livy
describes a dictator about to fight a battle as leaving his camp
_auspicato_, after sacrificing to obtain the _pax deorum_.[621] It is
for this reason that the _auspicia_ have a leading place in the
foundation legends of the city. We are all familiar with the story of
the _auspicia_ of Romulus and Remus, which goes back at least as far as
Ennius;[622] and we find them also in the foundation of _coloniae_ in
historical times.[623] I do not know that I can better express the place
which the _auspicia_ occupied in the mind of the Roman than by quoting
the words which Livy puts into the mouth of Appius Claudius in 367 B.C.,
when supposed to be inveighing against the opening of the consulship to
plebeians: "Auspiciis hanc urbem conditam esse, auspiciis bello ac pace,
domi militiaeque, omnia geri, quis est qui ignoret?" He goes on to argue
that these _auspicia_ belong to patricians only, that no plebeian
magistrate is created _auspicato_, that the man who wants to allow
plebeians to become curule magistrates, _tollit ex civitate auspicia_.
"Nunc nos, tanquam iam nihil pace deorum opus sit, omnes caerimonias
polluimus."[624] This is, of course, only Livy's rhetoric, but it
represents the fundamental Roman idea of the public _auspicia_.
The passage is also useful because it alludes to the fact that the right
of taking the _auspicia_ belonged ultimately to the whole patrician body
of fully qualified citizens.[625] But so far as we can discern in the
dim light of the earliest period, this body entrusted the right and duty
to its chief magistrate, the Rex, exactly as it entrusted him with the
_imperium_, the supreme power of command in civil matters. Thus the
_auspicia_ and the _imperium_ were indissolubly connected; as Dr.
Greenidge says,[626] "they are the divine and human side of the same
power," and may be found together in a thousand passages in Roman
literature and inscriptions. But at the side of the Rex we find,
according to tradition, two helpers or advisers called _augures_, the
three together perhaps forming a _collegium_.[627] Now there was
certainly an important difference between the Rex and the augurs; the
latter were aiders and interpreters, but the Rex only was said _habere
auspicia_, just as the whole patrician body had this right, though they
delegated it to the Rex during his lifetime, and on his death received
it again. The man who "habet auspicia" has the right of _spectio_,
_i.e._ of taking the auspices in a particular case,[628] of watching the
sky or the conduct of the sacred fowls in eating; this right the augurs
never had. Their power was limited to guidance and interpretation. This
follows necessarily from the fundamental principle that the _auspicia_
and the _imperium_ were indissolubly connected; for the augur, of
course, never possessed the _imperium_ by virtue of his office. It is
true that of the augur in the regal period we know almost nothing; his
art, as we shall see directly, was kept strictly secret, and he was
bound by oath not to reveal it.[629] But we may safely argue back in
general terms from the relation of magistrate and augur under the later
Republic to the relation of augur and Rex, from whom descended the
magistrate's _imperium_. The one essential thing to remember is that _it
was in all periods the magistrate who was responsible_, under the
sanction and advice of his assistants the pontifices and augurs, for the
maintenance of the _pax deorum_. The lay element in the actual working
of the constitution never lost this prerogative. Rome was never
hierarchically governed.
It would be going beyond the scope of these lectures if I were to plunge
at this point into the thorny question of the exact relation between
magistrate and augur in respect of details. Nor do I propose to go into
the minutiae of augural lore, which are not instructive, like those of
sacrifice, for our survey of Roman religious experience. It will be
sufficient to state in outline what I believe to be necessary for our
purpose.[630] The person who had the _auspicia_, _i.e._ originally the
Rex, like the later magistrate, had to watch for signs from heaven; in
order to do so he marked out a _templum_, a rectangular space, by noting
certain objects, trees or what not, beyond which, whether he looked at
earth or sky, he need take no notice of what he saw. The spot where he
took up his position for this purpose was itself a rectangular
space,[631] marked out on a similar principle; in each case the space
was _liberatus effatus_, _i.e._ freed from previous associations by a
form of words, and ready, if need were (as in the case of _loca sacra_)
to be further handed over to the deities as their property; this
consecration, however, did not, of course, follow in the ordinary
procedure of the _auspicia_. In the _urbana auspicia_ all _loca effata_
must be within the sacred boundary of the _pomoerium_. Within this the
magistrate watched in silence at the dead of night for such signs as he
especially asked for (_auspicia impetrativa_); those which offered
themselves without such specification (_oblativa_) he was not bound to
take cognisance of unless some one claimed his attention for them. The
signs were originally in the regal period, if we may guess from the word
_auspicium_, only such as birds supplied, and the space in which they
were watched for was not complicated by the divisions of the later
augural art.[632] The business of the augur was, we may suppose, to see
that the details were carried out correctly, and to interpret the signs;
but those signs were not sent to _him_, for he was not the actual
representative of the State in this ritual.
If the constitutional position and duty of the augurs have now been made
sufficiently clear, I may go on to explain briefly, as in the case of
the pontifices, how the office became gradually secularised, and the
duty formalised, so that if there ever had been anything of a really
religious character in this art, any genuine belief in the manifestation
by the Power of his will in matters of State life, such character, such
belief, had become by the second century B.C. entirely paralysed and
destroyed. But the history of the augurate is much more difficult to
follow than that of the pontificate. The work of the pontifices touched
the life of every day, public and private, at many points, with the
result that their secrets ceased to be secrets by the end of the fourth
century B.C. The work of the augurs was occasional, and more technical
than that of the other college; it can hardly be said to have affected
the religion of family life, nor did it continually bear upon public
life, as did the pontifical knowledge of the _ius divinum_ and the
calendar. Hence the augural lore was never published, under pressure of
public opinion, and neither ancient nor modern scholars have had to
waste their time in investigating it. Books were indeed written about it
in later times by one or two curious students, but in the time of
Cicero, who was himself an augur, the neglect of it was general, even by
members of the college.[633]
This mysterious augural lore was preserved in books, like that of the
pontifices; and in all probability these books were put together in the
same period as the latter, viz., the two centuries immediately following
the abolition of the kingship.[634] I think there is a strong
probability that the augurate emerged from the age of Etruscan rule
which marks the latter part of the kingly period, with increased
importance and fresh activity, the result of immediate contact with
Etruscan methods of divination.[635] It is likely that they began in
this way to cultivate the art of divination by lightning, which was
peculiarly Etruscan, and to divide their _templum_ into _regiones_,
which, as I said just now, were not apparently needed for the
observation of omens from birds. How far they carried this art we cannot
tell, owing to the loss of their books and the commentaries upon them;
but about the Etruscan discipline we do know something. Those who wish
to have a glimpse of it may consult the first chapter of the fourth
volume of Bouche-Leclercq's _History of Divination_, as a more
intelligible account than any known to me.[636] But all I need to insist
on now is the likelihood that the augurs began the Republican period
with a power of interpretation which was the more important because the
art was changed; it is now the depository not only of the old bird lore,
but of the new lightning lore. And as this last became the peculiar
characteristic of the art of public divination, and as the augurs were,
like the pontifices, a close self-electing corporation until 104 B.C.
and a close self-electing _patrician_ body until the lex Ogulnia of 300
B.C., holding secret meetings every month on the _arx_,[637] and
recording their lore in books which were never made public, they might
well have grown into a powerful hierarchy, _if they had only been
possessed of the right of spectio_. What saved Rome from this fate was
simply the fact that the college was a body of interpreters only, or, in
other words, the principle that the _auspicia_ belonged exclusively to
the magistrate. The _auspicia_ were in fact a matter of public law, not
of religion, properly speaking; the idea on which they were based, that
the sanction of the deities was needed for every public action, very
early lost its true significance, and the process of taking them became
a mere form, the religious character of which was almost entirely
forgotten. They ceased to be matter of religion just as the amulet or
any other form of preventive magic fails to be reckoned as within the
sphere of religion; the feeling was there that they must be attended to
(though even that feeling lost its strength in course of time), but only
as a matter of custom, not because the Power was really believed to
sanction an act in this way.