Augures

vol. II p.2313-2344

Augures

I. Etymology

A consensus is yet to be reached [as of 1896] on the various explanations from old and modern scholars for the etymology of the words augur and augurium. These explanations (aside from interpretations like those of Lindemann Corp. gramm. II p. 299 of a root aug ‘to see’, K. Ebel Ztschr. f. cf. Sprachf. IV 443. and J. Schmidt Verwandtschaftsverh. d. indog. Sprach. 54 of the same roots as αὐχεῖν, εὔχεσθαι and others) go in essentially two different directions. <50> At one time, it seemed very attractive to connect the words augur and augustus etymologically (as not only Ovid. fast. I 609ff. sancta vocant augusta patres … huius et augurium dependet origine verbi, but clearly also Ennius ann. frg. 389 Baehr. augusto augurio postquam inclita condita Roma est; cf. Valeton Mnemos. XX 341f.), <60> and accordingly A. Zimmerman (Arch. f. Lexik. VII 435f.) has recently deduced a noun *augus (augur) from augustus following the pattern of venus : venustus, robur : robustus, and this noun would first have meant the abstract ‘increase, blessing’, and then referred to the priests who gave out these blessings; with this in mind, augur would be related to augere (about augustus from augere, cf. Corssen Ztschr. f. cf. Sprachf. III 269ff.), <page break 2313/2314> and this word has also been connected to the name in a different way recently by V. Spinazzola (Atti d. R. Accad. Napoli XVI 2, 11ff. and in Ruggiero Dizion. epigr. I 778f.; cf. Nissen Templum 5, 1. Herzog Röm. Staatsverf. I 81, 1), by suggesting augur = auctor (cf. Cic. de leg. II 31 ius augurum cum auctoritate coniunctum; de har. resp. 18 rerum bene gerundarum auctoritates augurio … contineri). On the other hand, the identification with auspex, auspicium is objectively and linguistically undeniable, <10> and, since there can be no doubt about the interpretation of these words as avi-spex, avi-spicium, the idea of augur being avi-gur has also been given: this was also the dominant explanation in antiquity, although there were variations in their explanation of the second half of the word, which they connected with garrire (Fest. ep. p. 2 ab avium garritu; cf. Regnaud Rev. de l’hist. d. relig. XIV 1886, 67) or gustus (Suet. Aug. 7 ab avium gestu gustuve; cf. Vaniček Etym. Wörterb. d. lat. Sprache 86; else Lange Altert. I³ 332), <20> though mostly it was connected with gerere (Fest. loc. cit. augur ab avibus gerendoque dictus, quia per eum avium gestus edicitur. Serv. Aen. V 523 augurium dictum quasi avigerium quod aves gerunt. Suet. loc. cit., endorsed by Rubino Untersuch. üb. röm. Verf. u. Gesch. 40, 4. Mommsen Staatsr. I 101, 2. Valeton Mnemos. XVII 421f.), which the forms auger and augeratus attested by Priscian. I 36 match up with. <30> Since a combination of both derivations, which the ancients looked for by also understanding the word augustus as avi-gustus (Suet. loc. cit.), is impossible, the utterly convincing analogy with auspex, auspicium has to give up its connection with augustus (or more specifically, auctor) and we have to take auger as avi-ger, although the etymology of the second part of the word is yet to be conclusively determined. The Greeks presented the noun with compounds of οἰωνός, <40> that is, through οἰωνισταί (Cass. Dio XLII 21. XLIX 16), οἰωνοπόλοι (Dion. Hal. ant. II 64), οἰωνοσκόποι (Dion. Hal. III 70. 71. CIG add. 3865), οἰωνομάντεις (Dion. Hal. III 69), ἐπ’ οἰωνοῖς ἱερεῖς (Plut. Q. R. 72. 99) and others; however, none of these translations seem to have been taken on officially, since the Monum. Ancyr. gr. 4, 5 has αὔγουρ.

II. The nature and categories of the augurates

When Cicero de leg. II 20 describes the priesthood, which he had belonged to himself since the year 701 = 53, <50> as interpretes Iovis optimi maximi, publici augures, this definition provides the essentials very briefly. At once, it clearly separates the state priesthood of the augurate (augures publici also Varro de l. l. V 33. Cic. epist. VI 6, 7; augures populi Romani Gell. N.A. [corrected from: ibid.]. XIII 14, 1; augures publici populi Romani Quiritium often on inscriptions, CIL VI 503. 504. 511. 1449. X 211. 1695f. 1700. 4752) from the large number of private or municipal augurs. <60> Since in more ancient times, auspicia (see auspicium) were also taken in private life to a large extent, a private augur would have been available to the paterfamilias for this purpose as an expert, like the state augur was available to the magistrate; eg. Attus Navius of the myth (Cic. de divin. I 30ff. Liv. 36. Dion. Hal. ant. II 70) is thought to be such a private augur (cf. especially Dion. Hal. loc. cit. οἱ τῆς πόλεως οἰωνομάντεις οὐκ ὄντα ἐκ τοῦ συστήματος παρεκάλουν αὐτὸν διὰ τὴν ἐπιτυχίαν τῶν μαντευμάτων καὶ οὐθὲν ὅτι μὴ δόξειεν ἐκείνῳ προὔλεγον), <page break 2314/2315> and furthermore, Nigidius Figulus writes a multi-volume work about augurium privatum (in libro primo augurii privati Gell. VII 6, 10); in general, however, this private augury has evaded more precise understanding, <10> since we have no sources about it apart from a few derogatory remarks in older Roman literature (haruspicem augurem hariolum Chaldaeum ne quem consuluisse velit Cato de agric. 5, 4; Augur as a title of a comedy by Afranius, Pomponius, and Laberius), in these, it doesn’t once say for certain if augur is being used in a general technical sense or instead simply as a synonym for vates (like eg. Acc. 169 nil credo auguribus of Kalchas and others’ about the use of the word augur in Cicero Valeton Mnemos. XVIII 216, 2). <20> In actual fact, however, the art of the augurs is strictly different from every other kind of divinatio. Indeed, in Cicero’s time, a large scientific dispute between two notable members of the augur-collegium broke out over the duties and limitations of augury-divination, because Appius Claudius Pulcher (Cos. 700 = 54), in a multi-volume work de disciplina augurali (Fest. p. 298 Ap. Pulcher in auguralis disciplinae libro I) dedicated to Cicero (Cic. epist. III 4, 1), <30> held the opinion that discipline of augury aimed to achieve an actual enquiry into the future (praesensio aut scientia veritatis futurae Cic. de div. I 105), whereas his opponent C. Claudius Marcellus (Cos. 704 = 50) only saw it as a tool in the hands of the statesman (what happened in the dispute is in Cic. de div. I 105. II 75; de leg. II 32f., whose own position on the matter is a very wobbly and unsure one). <40> Such a difference in opinion could have only first appeared at a time when the nature of the discipline of augury itself was no longer understandable (Cic. de div. I 25, auspicia, quae quidem nunc a Romanis auguribus ignorantur, and more in Marquardt Staatsverw. III 66, 4); since the fact that the augurs were never actually trying to look into the future (Cic. de div. II 70 non enim sumus ii nos augures, qui avium reliquorumve signorum observatione futura dicamus) or to determine the hidden reasons for present happenings, <50> but instead were only trying to find the agreement of the gods to a certain event, or their disagreement, by a particular sign, irrefutably shows the teachings of the auspicia as being mostly still recognisable; therefore, the augurs in their very nature were also strictly different from the actual sacrificial priests and especially the pontifices, <60> who were in charge of maintaining the entire ritual, and they were also different from the priestly people in charge of other types of divination, namely the X (XV) viri sacris faciundis and the haruspices (cf. particularly Cic. de har. resp. 18 mariores … qui statas sollemnisqe caerimonias pontificatu, rerum bene gerendarum auctoritates augurio, fatorum veteres praedictiones Apollinis vatum libris, portentorum expiationes Etruscorum disciplina contineri putaverunt; more in Regell De augur. publ. libris 3ff.); <page break 2315/2316> with the last two named, they have it in common that they are interpretes (of the quindecimviri eg. Cic. de leg. II 20 unum - genus sacerdotum - quod interpretur fatidicorum et vatium ecfata incognita; of the haruspices Cic. de nat. deor. II 12 deorum autem interpretes sunt); but in contrast to the Greek oracular wisdom of the quindecimviri and the disciplina Etrusca of the haruspices, <10> which were both based on the concept of telling the future or preventing doom by indicating the means by which they could appease divine wrath, they alone practiced old-Roman divination as interpretes Iovis optimi maximi (Cic. de leg. II 20, cf. Phil. XIII 12 augurem Iovis optimi maximi, cuius interpretes internuntiique constituti sumus; de leg. III 43. Arnob. IV 34), since they don’t use arbitrary interpretation (coniectura) of the particular signs, <20> but instead operate under fixed rules to determine if the divinity (about the origin of all auspicia from Jupiter cf. Mommsen Staatsr. I 74, 2) is giving or denying their approval to the current matter (cf. also Rubino Untersuch. 41f. Anm.).

III. History and organisation of the college of augurs

Of course, <30> there was no tradition about the beginnings of the collegium augurum (CIL VI 1233; cf. Fest. p. 161. Cic. de div. I 28; Cato mai. 64; epist. III 10, 9 and others; σύστημα Dion. Hal. III 70). The pseudo-history, which traced the whole state of sacred old-Roman affairs back to king Numa, also attributed the introduction of the first augurs to this king (Liv. IV 4, 2 pontifices augures Romulo regnante nulli erant, ab Numa Pompilio creati sunt; cf. Dion. Hal. II 64); but the discipline of the auspicia, which the augurs took, <40> grew so closely with the whole Roman government that it was impossible to imagine that the state could have stood without them; even at the time of Numa’s coronation they imagined the augurs being active, despite him being the one who first introduced them (Liv. I 18, 6), and the state-founding-augurium carried out by Romulus and Remus became the first augury (Ennius in Cic. de div. I 107f. with the wonderful commentary J. Vahlens S.-Ber. Akad. Berlin 1894, 1143ff.); <50> in order to not necessarily get rid of this contradiction, but at the very least to lessen it, people moved the founding of the college of augurs all the way back to Romulus (Cic. de rep. II 16. Dion. Hal. II 22). There was just as much uncertainty about the original make-up of the college. The only thing determined for sure was that the number of augurs was nine, five of which had to be plebs, following the lex Ogulnia of the year 454 = 300 (Liv. X 6, 6. 9, 2. Lyd. de mag. I 45). <60> The fact that these five plebeian spots had been newly added at that time was an arbitrary assumption which Livy found in his sources and passed on, without realising the difficulties that brought up; since the total of four augurs, which, according to this assumption, must have been the total before the extra augurs were added, cannot be made to agree with the fact that a total of three, tracing back to the three old original tribes, was the reason for there being three positions in the college of augurs (Liv. X 6, 7f. Cic. de rep. II 16. Dion. Hal. II 22), <page break 2316/2317> and the solution to this problem offered by Livy - that at the time, two of the six augury positions could have happened to have been got rid of following deaths (Liv. loc. cit. quemadmodum ad quattuor augurum numerum nisi morte duorum id redigi collegium potuerit non invenio, cum inter augures constet imparem numerum debere esse, ut tres atiquae tribus, Ramnes Titienses Luceres, suum quaeque augurum habeant aut, si pluribus sit opus, pari inter se numero sacerdotes multiplicent), <10> cannot seriously be considered. The original total of three augurs should be taken as certain, not only because tradition agrees unanimously on it, but also because of analogy with the pontifices and the Vestal Virgins, and above all the fact that later on, a total of three was imposed upon the pontifices as well as the augurs for the Roman colonies (lex colon. Iul. Genet. CIL II Suppl. 5439 c. 67, on this Mommsen Ephem. epigr. III p. 99). <20> There have been a lot of disputes over what intermediate stages should be assumed between the original total of three, and the total of nine prescribed by the lex Ogulnia and probably first achieved by it too. When Cicero, who attributes the introduction of augurs to Romulus, and who attributes the introduction of two new positions - so, an increase to five - to Numa (de rep. II 26), to have him also do something for the college, <30> this cannot really be taken as tradition; Rubino (De augurum et pontificum apud veteres Romanos numero, Progr. Marburg 1852) looked for an explanation for the increase from three to five (instead of to six) with regards to the impar numerus, while others looked for an explanation in the suggestion that the king, who would naturally have been a member of the college, <40> wouldn’t be included in the total of five (Marquardt Staatsverw. III 241. Lange Altert. I 335; else Mercklin Cooptation 96ff.). In order to keep open the question of the in no way obvious or certain belonging of the king to the college, it is much more certain that there couldn’t have been any other intervening stage apart from six between three and nine (else Valeton Mnemos. XIX 410, 5), as Livy loc. cit. assumes, <50> and as analogy with the pontifices (according to Cic. de leg. agr. II 96, six pontifices were went into the colony of Capua; the ten augurs mentioned there represent an unusual increase in the total for the purpose of establishing colonies, but they certainly didn’t remain so numerous for a long time), as well as with the Vestal Virgins. Just as the pontifices, the augurs were also later increased to fifteen by Sulla (Liv. per. 89); <60> when Cass. Dio XLII 51 attributes the introduction of a sixteenth position to Caesar, he is probably referring to nothing other than the right to select members supra numerum to be taken into the higher state priesthoods, a right exercised by the later emperors (cass. Dio LI 20; cf. Marquardt Staatsverw. III 381. 7. Mommsen Staatsr. II 1055).

Appointing augurs and expanding the college took place following the same laws, <page break 2317/2318> which were generally in effect over the great priesthoods (Mommsen Staatsr. II 23ff.). In place of the position which we can assume with certainty appointment by the king took, in the time of the Republic there was instead cooption by the college (Mercklin Cooptation 98f.), nothing of which was changed by the lex Ogulnia (the term creantur in Liv. X 9, 2 about the first plebeian pontifices and augurs doesn’t need to refer to a popular vote; the mention of comitia auguris creandi in 570 = 184 BCE in Liv. XXXIX 45, 8 is apocryphal, Mommsen loc. cit. 27, 4). <10> For both the augurs and the other summa collegia, the lex Domitia of 651 = 103 BCE introduced an election by sacerdotal quasi-comitia, in so far as the collegium would present candidates when vacancies opened up (nominare Auct. ad Herenn. I 20. Cic. epist. ad Brut. I 7, 1; Phil. II 4. Plin. epist. II 1, 8. IV 8, 3; nominatione cooptare Cic. Phil. XIII 12; also just cooptare Cic. Brut. 1, cf. epist. ad Brut. I 5, 3), <20> and it was made certain that this list would be comprehensive because no more than two augurs would be allowed to nominate the same candidate (Cic. Phil. II 4 me augurem a toto collegio expetitum Cn. Pompeius et Q. Hortensius nominaverunt, nec enim licebat a pluribus nominari; the idea that this was a new thing, first put in place by the lex Iulia de sacerdotiis mentioned in Cic. epist. ad Brut. I 5, 3, and that previously every augur had to bring a different candidate to the list, seems to me to be an unfounded assumption by Mommsen loc. cit. 28f.); <30> nomination happened out loud in a contio (Auct. ad Her. I 20) under a sworn assurance that they would be worthy (Cic. Brut. 1; cf. Suet. Claud. 22); then, being elected by the minor pars populi - ie by 17 from the total number of tribes selected by lot - finally meant the cooptatio of the elected person by the college (Cic. de leg. agr. II 18). <40> On the basis of this legislation, which was repealed for a while by Sulla (Ps.-Ascon. p. 102 Or.), but reinstated by T. Labienus for the year 691 = 63 through a plebiscit (Cass. Dio XXXVII 37), augurs were also appointed during the empire, though the right to vote was transferred to the senate (Mommsen Staatsr. III 1051f.), and the comitia sacerdotum (mentioned further by Seneca de benef. VII 28, 2 and Acta Arv. from 69 BCE, CIL VI 2051 a 70) only received announcement of any failure in the election (Henzen Acta fratr. Arval. p. 67). <50> However, this senatorial election was probably primarily only practiced to admit the emperors (who did regularly belong to the quattuor amplissima collegia) and the emperors’ sons, whereas the rest of the positions were filled by the emperor making use of his right of commendatio (examples for the augurate in Mommsen Staatsr. II 1056, 2), <60> often even without the senate even being communicated with about it (this is why it is said specifically about Alexander Severus that pontificatus et quindecimviratus et auguratus codicillares fecit ita, ut in senatu allegarentur, Hist. Aug. Alex. 49, 2). After the elections were completed, there was an inauguration (Liv. XXVII 36, 5. XXX 26, 10. XXXIII 44, 3. Cic. Brut. 1. Suet. Cal. 12; cf. Dion. Hal. II 22), <page break 2318/2319> which, according to the only known example, seems to have been carried out by the augur who had nominated the candidate (Cic. Brut. I et cooptatum me ab eo in collegium recordabar, in quo iuratus iudicium dignitatis meae fecerat, et inauguratum ab eodem); either way, carrying this out would establish a pietas-relationship between the two people taking part (Cic. loc. cit. ex quo augurum institutis in parentis eum loco colere debebam), <10> as importance was attached to the close personal relationship between the members in general in this college (Cic. epist. III 10, 9 amplissimi sacerdotii collegium, in quo non modo amicitiam violari apud maiores nostros fas non erat, sed ne cooptari quidem sacerdotem licebat, qui cuiquam ex collegio esset inimicus). The end of the acceptance-formalities was marked by the opening feast, cena aditialis, where there was plenty of luxury, <20> as usually happened at all the priest dinners (Varro de r. r. III 6, 6 = Plin. n. h. X 45. Cic. epist. VII 26, 2; about the augurs’ alleged duty to be present at these feasts or to excuse their absence by swearing that they were ill, which people have concluded from Cic. ad Att. XII 13-17, cf. C. Bardt Priester d. vier grossen Collegien 26f.). At least at the end of the republic, the names of the members were displayed in inscriptions by officials, and indeed it followed decuriae (see there), ie for every position, those that held it were written in order of who succeeded whom; <30> an extant fragment of these fasti augurum (CIL VI 1976), under a precise list of the consuls (the suffecti too) and the number of years ab urbe condita, contains the record of the cooptations. The extant piece refers to two decuriae and to the years 666 = 88 BCE to 760 = 7 CE, in which three replacements happened in one of the decuriae. <40> C. Bardt tried to reconstruct the list of augurs for the time of the republic in his work Die Priester der vier grossen Collegien aus römisch-republicanischer Zeit, Progr. Berlin 1871, 17ff., continued by Bouché-Leclercq Histoire de la divination IV 363ff. and Brissaud in the French translation of Mommsen-Marquardt’s Handbuch XIII 128ff.; the list by Spinazzola in Ruggiero Dizion. epigr. I 709ff. is more complete, though it isn’t chronological, <50> and is instead ordered according to the different secular offices which each augur took on at the same time as their priesthood. We don’t know of any specific requirements for augurs to be elected, apart from the fact that after the lex Ogulnia, only plebs were allowed to take up five of the positions; the other four were available to both classes, though in the 6th and 7th centuries a.u.d. they were actually almost always taken up by patricians (Mommsen Röm. Forsch. I 80ff.); <60> it cannot be determined for certain whether some of the extra positions in the augural decuriae which Sulla added to increase the total to fifteen were also reserved for plebs, but no conclusions can be made from Cicero’s exaggerated statement (de domo 37) that, if there weren’t any patricians any more, the Roman people would soon have neque regem sacrorum neque flamines nec salios, nec ex parte dimidia reliquos sacerdotes. <page break 2319/2320> An actual limitation lay in the fact that two members of the same family couldn’t belong to the college (Cass. Dio XXXIX 17, who incorrectly generalises this rule to all priesthoods); since, as Bardt loc. cit. 34ff. has shown, this rule was only in effect for patrician gentes, but not for the plebeian families which - in the strictest sense of the word - aren’t gentes, then this rule was clearly introduced when the priesthood was only available to patricians. <10> The office was strictly lifelong (Plin. epist. IV 8, 1 sacerdotium … sacrum plane et insigne est, quod non adimitur viventi; the fact that, according to Cass. Dio XLVIII 36. 54, S. Pompeius was appointed augur under an agreement with Misenum in 715 = 39 and was declared no longer a priest two years later does not contradict this, because in this instance it was a revolutionary action, and S. Pompeius had also clearly not been made a part of the college at all), <20> and gave whoever held it such a character indelebilis that even those who had been legally convicted did not lose their position (Plut. Q. R. 99: ἕως ζῇ, κἂν ἐπὶ τοῖς μεγίστοις ἀδικήμασι καταγνῶσιν οὐκ ἀφαιροῦνται τὴν ἱερωσύνην; it was different in the colonies according to the lex col. Genet. c. 67 quicumque .. in conlegium pontific(um) augurumq(ue) in demortui damnative loco h(ac) l(ege) lectus cooptatusve erit). Even a voluntary resignation, perhaps to take up a different priesthood (as, eg., a Salian resigned to become an augur, CIL VI 1982, 10) cannot be proven, though in a way it wasn’t forbidden, because becoming an augur neither ruled out taking on other priesthoods at the same time, nor magistricial roles; a long list of examples (the most complete in Spinazzola loc. cit. 788f.) shows that an augur could also be a Salius (this was very common, the republic offers an example Ap. Claudius Pulcher, Macr. III 14, 14, and later on there is M. Metilius Regulus Cos. 157, CIL XIV 2501), <40> a rex sacrorum (CIL XIV 3604), a frater arvalis (CIL VI 2023a 10. 19. 20), a sodalis Titius (CIL VI 1343), a fetiale (Ephem. epigr. IV 830), a curio, or rather, curio maximus (CIL X 3853. VI 1578) or a member of one of the sodalities of the cult of the emperor (there are many examples, eg. CIL III 2974f. XI 1432f. and others). <50> There are a few examples of an augurate being combined with one of the other four great priesthoods during the republic (Q. Fabius Cunctator Pontifex and augur, Ti. Sempronius Longus Augur and decemvir, see Bardt loc. cit. 38), but from the first two centuries of the empire, in the private sphere - since the emperor was a member of all the great priesthoods - no case like this can be demonstrated (Dessau Ephem. epigr. III p.208, 7), first C. Octavius Sabinus cos. 214 was Pontifex and augur at the same time (CIL X 5398), <60> and after that a combination of pontifex, augur, and quindecimvir, often also combined with other Roman and foreign priesthoods, turns up for the noble Romans of the second half of the 4th century, who tried for the last time to rescue paganism, as eg. M. Maecius Placidus (CIL X 1700), L. Aradius Proculus (CIL VI 1690) or Vettius Agorius Praetextatus (CIL VI 1778f.). <page break 2320/2321> The latter here (died 384) and L. Ragonius Vetustus (CIL VI 503 from the year 390) are the last known augurs, and the latest literary mention of this priesthood (in Arnob. IV 35 sedent in spectaculis publicis sacerdotum omnium magistratumque collegia … sedent interpretes augures divinae mentis et voluntatis) comes about 100 years earlier; since the empire’s order decree that augurum et vatum prava confessio conticescat from the year 357 (Cod. Theod. IX 16, 4) doesn’t refer to state priests, but to the private art of prophecy. <10>

It can already be seen that people valued being augur highly from the fact that people of the highest ranks in the state belonged to this college throughout all the ages (for the empire, an overview in Spinazzola loc. cit. 790ff.); in the oldest rank of priests (ordo sacerdotum, Fest. p. 185), which only encompassed the circle of pontifical priesthoods (rex, flamines, vestal virgins), <20> the augurs were just as absent as the fetiali, Salii, etc., there probably wasn’t a strict hierarchy within the pontifices; later, when the sacerdotum quattuor amplissima collegia (Mon. Anc. 2, 16) arose as a specific legal and hierarchical stage over the rest of the priesthoods, the official order moved the augurs’ place behind the pontifices and ahead of the quindecimviri (as in Varro’s antiqu. rer. divin., August. c. d. VI 3, furthermore eg. Tac. ann. III 64. Mon. Anc. 1, 45 and very often in the titles of the emperors), <30> for which exceptions only turn up rarely (eg. CIL XII 147), and when they do, it is almost always in inscriptions of collapsing paganism (eg. CIL VI 503. 1778. 1779). In terms of rights and honours, the augurs were on the same level as the rest of the priests: when they began their role, they turned up in the toga praetexta (Mommsen Staatsr. I 406, 3), <40> they had a place of honour at the games (Arnob. IV 35), and they enjoyed the vacatio muneris (Cic. Brut. 117) et militiae (Liv. XXXIII 42, 4), and all this was also the case for colonial augurs according to the Lex col. Genet. c. 66: iisque pontifici[b]us auguribusque, qui in quoque eorum collegio erunt, liberisque eorum militiae munerisque publici vacatio sacro sanctius esto, uti pontifici Romano est erit, [a]e[r]aque militaria ei omnia merita sunto … eisque pontificib(us) auguribusque ludis, quot publice magistratus facient, et cum ei pontific(es) augures sacra publica c(oloniae) G(enetivae) I(uliae) facient, togas praetextas habendi ius potestasque esto, eisque pontificib(us) augurib(us)q(ue) ludos gladiatoresq(ue) inter decuriones spectare ius potestasque esto (cf. Mommsen Ephem. epigr. III p.99ff.). <50> Furthermore, the college had a set income (the fact that an arca augurum is never mentioned is probably coincidence), <60> consisting of property handed over by the state to be used, as well as loca publica, quae in circuitu Capitolii pontificibus, auguribus, decemviris, et flaminibus in possessionem tradita erant (Oros. 18, 27), and estates for specific people, of which an ager Obscus in the area previously inhabited by the Veii gets named (Fest. p. 189 Obscum .. eodem etiam nomine appellatur locus in agro Veienti, quo frui soliti produntur augures Romani; in general cf. Marquardt Staatsverw. II 82f.); <page break 2321/2322> the state also provided them with servi publici (publici augurum is mentioned in CIL VI 2315-2317). The specific symbol of the augurs was the staff (lituus iste vester, quod clarissimum est insigne auguratus Cic. de div. I 30; cf. Serv. Aen. VII 190 ei lituum dedit, quod est augurum proprium), <10> which is described as a baculum sine nodo aduncum (Liv. I 18, 7; cf. Serv. Aen. VII 187 incurvum augurum baculum) or as an incurvum et leviter a summo inflexum bacillum (Cic. loc. cit), and often turns up on coins and in reliefs (see the article lituus); as well as this - although not always, but when carrying out specific duties - the augurs wore the old martial gown, the trabea, and it was scarlet and purple, <20> meaning that it could be differentiated from the other trabeae because of its colour (Serv. Aen. VII 612: Suetonius in libro de genere vestium dicit tria genera esse trabearum: unum dis sacratum, quod est tantum de purpura; aliud regum, quod est purpureum, habet tamen album aliquid; tertium augurale de purpura et cocco; cf. VII 188. 190).

We know very little about the inner organisation of the college. Nothing is handed down to us about the position of leader in the college, and because of this, Mercklin (Cooptation 98) completely denies the existence of a leader. <30> But it is inconceivable that such complicated proceedings as must have been necessary for those who organised the augurs to carry out could have been able to have been carried out without somebody in charge, and since we know that in the college of augurs, voting happened strictly in order of age (Cic. de sen. 64 multa in collegio vestro praeclara, sed hoc, de quo agimus, in primis, quod ut quisque aetate antecedit ita sententiae principatum tenet, neque solum honore antecedentibus, sed iis etiam, qui cum imperio sunt maiores natu augures anteponuntur), <40> it seems likely that the oldest one was in charge, the name of which would be clear: augur maximus, in analogy to the virgo Vestalis maxima (Marquardt Staatsverw. III 399); and since the title of maximus augurum is attested for the municipal colleges of augurs in two Numidian cities, Cuicul (CIL VIII suppl. 20152) and Cirta (CIL VIII 7103) in inscriptions, <50> it must be taken as certain that this was the name; since in both inscriptions, the title maximus augurum is given a number (bis or VII), in Numidia the office was a temporary one, but that in itself shows that the title augur maximus wasn’t invented there, but was taken from Rome, since when it was first transferred over to Numidia it lost its usual link to the eldest person (cf. Mercklin Cooptation 77). <60> There weren’t any other kinds of high officials in the college; in terms of lower officials, we come across viatores (a viator augurum CIL VI 1847) and calatores, the latter being the individual augurs’ personal porters, usually their freedmen (Suet. gramm. 12 Cornelius Epicadus, L. Cornelii Syllae dictatoris libertus calatorque in sacerdotio augurali. CIL VI 2187 L. Iunius Silani l(ibertus) Paris dispensator, calator augurum). <page break 2322/2323> Regular meetings took place every month during the Nones (Cic. de div. I 90 magi, qui congregantur in fano commentandi causa atque inter se conloquendi, quod etiam idem vos quondam facere Nonis solebatis; de amic. 7 proximis Nonis, cum in hortos D. Bruti auguris commentandi causa, ut adsolet, venissemus) and in the house of one of the members of the college (Cic. de amic. 7), not in some official work-place, which the augurs don’t seem to have even had at all; <10> because the auguracula in the citadel and the Quirinal (see Auguraculum) and the auguratorium (see there) on the Palatine are not meeting-places, but places for augural observations. We find out little about particular rules of rituals that relate to the augurs; the rule against touching corpses (feralia adtrectare, Tac. ann. I 62) impacted them as well as the other priests; and the rules that an augur’s lamp couldn’t have any cover (Plut. Q. R. 72) or that an augur couldn’t observe the sky if he was wounded (ibid. 73) are just as incomprehensible to us in terms of their origins as they were to Plutarch’s sources.

IV. The augurs’ archive

A discipline which was so complicated and so tied-in with all the facets of public life, like the disciplina auguralis (Cic. de div. II 74; de leg. II 20 and others) or the ius augurium (Cic. de sen. 12 and others [german abbr. u. a. corrected from printed u. s.], <30> would require exhaustive records as a basis for the sacred strict rules which were seen as holy tradition from ancient times, as well as for the applications and interpretations of these rules over time. Accordingly, the augurs didn’t only possess lists of members (fasti, see above p.2319), <40> and surely also logs (acta, not directly attested, because the source in Fest. ep. p. 16 arcani sermonis significatio trahitur …. a genere sacrificii, quod in arce fit ab auguribus, adeo remotum a notitia vulgari, ut ne litteris quidem mandetur, sed per memoriam successorum celebretur isn’t about logs, but about the ritual books) like all the other priest colleges, but also comprehensive ritual specifications, which are often cited as libri augurum or augurales (Varro de l. l. V 21. 58. VII 51. Fest. p. 253. Serv. Aen. III 537. IV 45. VIII 95. IX 20. Cic. de rep. II 54), or commentarii augurum (Fest. p. 317. Serv. Aen. I 398. Cic. de div. II 42); <50> the earlier general view that libri and commentarii referred to two separate collections of writings, where the libri would have contained the ancient basis of augural law, whereas the commentarii would have contained the decisions (decreta Cic. de div. II 73; de leg. II 31. Liv. IV 7, 3. Fest. p. 161) and legal opinions (responsa Cic. de domo 39f.) made over the course of the centuries, is lacking in any proper basis, <60> and can be shown to be incorrect because statements which must have belonged to the ancient history of augural rituals, eg. the statement Iove tonante fulgurante comitia populi habere nefas, are cited directly from the commentarii (Cic. de div. II 42); cf. Regell De augur. publ. libris part. I (Diss. Vratislaviae 1878) 30ff. <page break 2323/2324> The fact that these writings were only available to the augurs is self-explanatory (Plut. Q. R. 99 even explains the fact that augurs couldn’t be removed by saying that whoever got to know τὰ τῶν ἱερῶν ἀπόρρητα as an augur would never be able to stop being a priest, or lose the obligation to remain silent attached to that), and accordingly, in 697 = 57 BCE which was four years before he became an augur himself, Cicero was perfectly able to describe them as secret books (de domo 39 venio ad augures, quorum ego libros, si qui sunt reconditi, non scrutor; non sum in exquirendo iure augurum curiosus; haec quae una cum populo didici, quae saepe in contionibus responsa sunt, novi); <10> by interpreting the term libri reconditi as a title, it is possible to come to the false conclusion that there was a particular set of augural books titled this (the libri reconditi cited by Serv. Aen. I 398. II 649 belong to the Etruca disciplina, as the latter source clearly shows, cf. Regella. loc. cit. 34ff.). <20> When Varro, Festus, Gellius, Servius, etc. share not only lots of information about the actual content of the libri augurales, but even mention linguistic details about specific terms (eg. tera in augurum libris scripta cum R uno Varro de l. l. V 21; libri augurum pro tempestate tempestutem dicunt ibid. VII 51) despite this secrecy, this knowledge was shared with them by the broad private writings of a few individual augurs (often only cited generally as augures, in Gell. XIII 14, 1 augures populi Romani, qui libros de auspiciis scripserunt); <30> during the time of Cicero, apart from the augurs C. Claudius Marcellus and Ap. Claudius Pulcher mentioned above p.2315, the following members of the college of augurs were also active in literary spheres: L. Iulius Caesar (sexto decimo auspiciorum libro Macrob. sat. I 16, 29; in auguralibus Prisc. VI 86), Cicero (de auguriis Charis. GL I 105, 4. 122, 22. 139, 11; in auguralibus Serv. Aen. V 738), <40> M. Valerius Messala (liber de auspiciis primus Gell. XIII 15, 3; in explanatione auguriorum Fest. p. 161, cf. 253), P. Servilius (Fest. p. 351 Ateius Capito .. auctoritatem secutus P. Servilii auguris), and what was shared in these works was then expanded upon in ancient academic literature, like in the special works of the grammarians Ennius (de auguriandi disciplina Suet. gramm. 1) and Veranius (auspiciorum Fest. p. 289), <50> and also in the third book de auguribus of Varro’s antiquitates rerum divinarum (incorrectly cited in augurum libris by Macrob. sat. I 16, 19), as well as in more general works, like in Verrius Flaccus’ work de verborum significatu; and it is these works which the accounts of our extant authors come from, which means that any information we have about the libri augurales has always passed through at least three or four different hands, and is therefore warped and watered-down; <60> but although these fragments (collected by A. Brause Librorum de disciplina augurali ante Augusti mortem scriptorum reliquiae, I, Diss. Lipsiae 1875 and better by P. Regell Fragmenta auguralia, Progr. Hirschberg 1882; Commentarii in librorum auguralium fragmenta specimen, ibid. 1893, cf. also Comment. in honor. Reifferscheidii 61ff.) are usually only sparse details, <page break 2324/2325> and often only a few words of the sermo auguralis, they still provide us with an insight into the technicalities of the disciplina auguralis and the principles that governed it, to a certain degree.

V. The augurs’ service

The wording of their obligations gives us the best starting point in getting an idea of the areas within which the college of augurs was active. This has been recorded in Cicero de leg. II 20f. in his sacred legislation: <10> interpretes autem Iovis Optimi Maximi publici augures a) signis et auspiciis † postea (no certain edit here has been found yet, Dambin’s postera seems inadequate; Regell’s suggestion in de augur. libr. 25 Anm. to replace postea vidento with operam danto seems to get the general sense very correct) vidento, disciplinam tenento; b) sacerdotesque et (et added by Halm) vineta virgetaque et salutem populi auguranto; c) quique agent rem duelli quique popularem auspicium praemonento ollique obtemperanto, divorumque iras providento sisque apparento; d) caelique fulgura regionibus ratis temperanto urbemque et agros et templa liberata et effata habento; e) quaeque augur iniusta nefasta vitiosa dira defixerit, inrita infectaque sunto quique non paruerit, capital esto. <20> Of the five sections this code divides into (correctly sorted by Regell loc. cit.), the first (a) gives a general overarching definition of the augurs as those who bring information from the signs of the gods’ will, the last one (e), apart from the sanctio, clarifies how the augurs should express their opinions, but the statements about the augurs’ authority lie in the three middle sections, ordered according to the three legal terms inauguratio (b), auspicia (c), and templum (d); the importance and the meaning of these terms is handled in their relevant individual articles, <40> here we will only discuss how the augurs relate to them, and the areas of activity the augurs had with regards to these terms.

a) Independent ritual acts by the augurs (auguria)

Cicero’s words make it very clear that in each of the three areas of activity he attributes to the augurs, they contributed something different; in the first, they carry out the rituals independently (auguranto), <50> in the second they are only able to make warnings (praemonento, providento, apparento), and in the third their task is to worry about specific things (temperanto, habento). The official term for an augur’s independent ritual is augurare or inaugurare (in absolute terms in Varro de l. l. V 47. Liv. I 6, 4. 36, 4; the fact that the two words mean the same thing can be concluded from the fact that augurato and inaugurato are used interchangeably, <60> eg. augurato urbe condenda Liv. I 18, 6 next to urbem auspicato inauguratoque conditam habemus Liv. V 52, 2; in tuo Iuppiter augurato templo Liv. VIII 5, 8 alongside fana, quae … consecrata inaugurataque .. fuerant Liv. I 55, 2; Cic. Vatin. 24 in illo augurato templo ac loco alongside Cic. de domo 137 in templo inaugurato etc.); this verb takes the person or thing which the ritual is being carried out about as its object (certaeque res augurantur L. Iulius Caesar in Prisc. VIII 15), <page break 2325/2326> according to Cicero 1) the sacerdotes, 2) the vineta virgetaque, 3) the salus populi Romani; and although it’s common to see an inauguration of particular places, especially of temple (eg. locum inaugurari Liv. III 20, 6; Capitolium cum inauguraretur Flor. I 7, 8 etc.), in these situations the term is being used in a non-technical sense for augurato liberari (Liv. V 54, 7) or per augures liberari effarique (Serv. Aen. I 446), see below. <10> The term inauguratio for priests is attested for the augurs themselves (see above p.2318), as well as for the flamines (Flamen Dialis: Gai. I 130. III 114. Ulp. frg. 10, 5. Liv. XXVII 8, 4. XLI 28, 7; Flamen Martialis: Liv. XXIX 38, 6. XLV 15, 10. Macr. sat. III 13, 11; Flamen Quirinalis: Liv. XXXVII 47, 8; Flamen divi Iulii: Cic. Phil. II 110) and the Rex sacrorum (Liv. XXVII 36, 5. XL 42, 8), <20> its use for the Vestal Virgins is doubtful (since Gaius and Ulpian loc. cit. draw parallels between the inauguratio of the flamen Dialis and the captio of the Vestal Virgins, not their inauguratio, they were definitely not aware of the latter, but in Cato’s speech de auguribus in Fest. p. 241 and in Gell. VII 7, 4, the term exauguratio of the Vestal Virgins doesn’t conclusively suggest an inauguratio, since exauguratio isn’t when you repeal an inauguratio, but instead is when you are freed from some kind of basic sacred obligation through an augural ritual, see below p.2338; <30> in Hist. Aug. M. Aurel. 4, 4, when M. Aurelius as a Salius is said et multos inauguravit atque exauguravit nemine praeeunte, this should naturally not be taken in a technical sense), and its use for the pontifices is doubtful too (it isn’t attested in Liv. XXX 26, 10, but only through Dion. Hal. II 73; however, this source could refer to the first auspicia of the pontifex maximus, <40> and regardless, it’s a source of little value, because the same author II 22 has ἅπαντας τοὺς ἱερεῖς τε καὶ λειτουργοὺς τῶν θεῶν inaugurated ceremonially in front of the curia, which is surely incorrect; cf. Mommsen Staatsr. II 31f.). We have direct evidence that it was the augur who carried out the inauguration (on this, see H. Oldenberg Comment. Mommsen. 159ff. in contrast to Mommsen loc. cit. and cf. Valeton Mnemos. XIX 451ff.) not only for the augurs themselves (Cic. Brut. 1), but also for the flamines (Macrob. sat. III 13, 11. Cic. Phil. II 110); even in Livy’s report about Numa Pompilius’ inauguration (Liv. I 18, 6-10), which is, however, clearly just a repetition of the usual ceremony that was historically performed at the inauguration of the rex sacrorum, only augurs are carrying anything out. Considering all this evidence, when Livy attributes the inauguration of the rex sacrorum to the pontifex maximus, or rather to the pontifices, this cannot be taken seriously (XL 42, 8 quem ut inauguraret pontifex; cf. § 10 religio inde fuit pontificibus inaugurandi Dolabellae; P. Cloelium Siculum inauguraverunt, qui secundo loco inauguratus [sic!] erat); <60> the vague term, which refers to nothing more than what is stated in XXVII 8, 4 by flaminem Dialem invitum inaugurari coegit .. pontifex maximus, can be explained by the fact that the comitia calata would also take part in the inauguration of the rex and of the flamines, <page break 2326/2327> lead by the pontifex maximus pro collegio pontificum (Gell. XV 27, 1 Labeonem scribere calata comitia esse, quae pro collegio pontificum habentur aut regis aut flaminum inaugurandorum causa): the relationship between these comitia and the inauguration rituals lead by the augur isn’t certain, but probably the pontifex maximus announced that the inauguratio had been completed in them. <10> We only know details about the ceremonies carried out by the augur from the description of Numa’s inauguration in Liv. I 18, 6ff. (cf. Plut. Numa 7); according to Livy, the person being inaugurated is lead onto the citadel, and, facing towards the south, he would sit down upon a stone; the augur would be on his left, and with his toga pulled over the back of his head (capite velato, cf. Fest. p. 343b 6ff.) and with the lituus in his right hand, <20> he would first identify the regions of the sky (see below p.2340), then, taking the lituus in his left hand, he would lay his right hand on the head of the man who was being inaugurated, and would make a solemn prayer to Iuppiter asking him to send a specific sign of his agreement within the marked boundaries (Iuppiter pater, si est fas hunc Numam Pompilium, cuius ego caput teneo, regem Romae esse, uti tu signa nobis certa adclarassis inter eos fines, quos feci); the whole course of events, <30> the augur’s covered head (on this, see P. Regell Jahrb. f. Philol. CXXXV 1887, 782), the placing of the hand, etc., all show clearly that the augur is the one carrying out the ritual, and not the one being inaugurated, which means that this custom shouldn’t be put on the same level as the first ausipicia of the magistrates, which Mommsen compares it to (during the time of the kings, the detailed description of Romulus entering power - not being inaugurated - in Dion. Hal. II 5 reflects this ceremony, cf. Regell Jahrb. f. Philol. CXXXVII 1888, 544ff. and on this Valeton Mnemos. XVII 436, 1); <40> the idea that the augur is only acting in the name of the pontifex maximus isn’t attested anywhere, and is discredited by the fact that the whole ceremony is called inauguratio; it is only probable that the pontifex maximus would have informed the college of augurs after a successful captio of a flamen or rex, <50> or would have given permission for one specific augur to carry out the inauguration (Fest. loc. cit.; and when in Dion. Hal. V 1, τοὺς ἱεροφάντας τε καὶ οἰωνομάντεις ἀποδεῖξαι τὸν ἐπιτηδειότατον is designated for the election of the rex sacrorum, it should be understood with this in mind); perhaps the note in Serv. Aen. III 117 is also referring to this: iuxta speciem auguralem .. quae appellatur condictio, id est denuntiatio, cum denuntiatur ut ante diem tertium quis ad inaugurandum adsit. <60>

The term used to describe the whole ritual, which isn’t actually handed down to us, would have had to have been augurium sacerdotii, in analogy to augurium salutis (οἰώνισμα τῆς ὑγιείας Cass. Dio), which Cicero refers to with the words salutem populi auguranto. We hear of this ritual being completed from the years 691 = 63 (Cass. Dio. XXXVII 24f. Cic. de div. I 105), 725 = 29 (Cass. Dio LI 20; cf. Suet. Aug. 31), and 47 CE (Tac. ann. XII 23 salutis augurium quinque et septuaginta annis omissum repeti ac deinde continuari placitum); <page break 2327/2328> it was carried out by an augur (Cic. loc. cit. Tibi Ap. Claudius augur consuli nuntiavit addubitato salutis augurio bellum domesticum triste ac turbulentum fore), and it seems that there wasn’t any active participation of the magistrates (cf. Valeton loc. cit. 418), <10> although they are mentioned in the wording of the prayer (Fest. p. 161 pro collegio quidem augurum decretum est, quod in salutis augurio praetores maiores et minores appellantur, non ad aetatem, sed ad vim imperii pertinere); on the importance of the ceremony, we only have the wild account of Cass. Dio XXVII 24f.; according to this, it had to take place every year on a day on which there was no Roman army out in the field, though it was often impossible for the whole year when there was never absolute peace; <20> it aimed to observe the flight of birds to determine whether the gods had allowed them to pray for the salus populi Romani (πύστιν τινὰ ἔχων, εἰ ἐπιτρέπει σφίσιν ὁ θεὸς ὑγίειαν τῷ δήμῳ αἰτῆσαι, ὡς οὐχ ὅσιον <ὂν> οὐδὲ αἴτησιν αὐτῆς πρὶν συγχωρηθῆναι γενέσθαι). The last idea just seems to have been spun out of the word augurium; the sacred act itself probably originated in the times when (like eg. the Mars festivals in the oldest fasti show) the yearly military campaign belonged just as much to the regular events of the year as sewing crops or harvest, and after the campaign finished successfully, a new holy people was supposed to have been won for the state through augural observations, so to speak.

The most disputed one is the ceremony of augurare vineta virgetaque mentioned by Cicero; <40> while Marquardt (Staatsverw. III 409) interprets it as the preparation of the vineae for the augurs’ temple, Rubino (Untersuch. I 53 Anm) understands it as a request for the gods’ approval from the augurs which preceded the famous ambarvalia, and Valeton (loc. cit. 419) links it to the opening of the grape harvest by the Flamen Dialis (flamen Dialis auspicatur vindemiam Varro de l. l. VI 16), which also happened to precede an augural investigation into the gods’ wishes. <50> None of these viewpoints holds water - Marquardt’s, apart from the fact that the words vineae or even vineta virgetaque can’t be used generally to refer to augural observations, doesn’t work because augurare cannot possibly mean the same as effare et liberare, and because Cicero only first speaks of the augurs’ responsibility over the templa later; and the other two interpretations don’t work because although augurare vineta virgetaque couldn’t have been spoken of as an important duty of the augurs, <60> if their actions were limited to observing the birds there, the actual ritual would have been carried out by other priests, the fratres arvales, or the Flamen Dialis. Rubino was certainly justified in seeing the vineta virgetaque as a shortened way of expressing Rome’s fields (a more complete version is in Cato de agric. 141 fruges frumenta vineta virgultaque), <page break 2328/2329> but the ritual itself must have been something fit to be carried out by the augurs. Now, we know of an annual festival celebrated in Rome in midsummer, which was considered to be for the protection of the crops against the dangers from the Dog Star and the draughts it represented (pro frugibus deprecandae saevitiae causa sideris caniculae Fest p.285), <10> and which bore the name augurium canarium (Plin. n. h. XVIII 14: ita enim est in commentariis pontificum; augurio canario agendo dies constituantur priusquam frumenta vaginis exeant nec antequam in vaginas perveniant; canarium sacraficium Fest. p. 285; sacrum canarium Philarg. on Verg. Georg. IV 425) from the sacrifice of red dogs made there (rutilae canes Fest. loc. cit. rufae canes Fest. ep. p. 45). The idea that this festival was identical with the Robigalia, <20> as has been universally assumed, is completely out of the picture; the only things in common between the two festivals are the fact that their purpose is to ask the gods to protect their crops against the danger of the summer heat, and the dog sacrifices (for the Robigalia Ovid. fast. IV 908. 936ff. Colum. X 343); but both the time and the place of both festivals are different, since although they both fell when it was very hot, the Robigalia happened on 25th April while the augurium canarium fell on different dates each year (Plin. loc. cit.), <30> and the Robigalia took place a long way away from the city, at the fifteenth milestone of the via Claudia (fast. Praen. 25. April, cf. Mommsen CIL I² p.316f.), but the augurium canarium took place at the actual city, since a gate was named porta catularia after it (Fest. ep. p.45: catularia porta Romae dicta est, quia non longe ab ea ad placandum caniculae sidus frugibus inimicum rufae canes immolabantur, ut fruges flavescentes ad maturitatem perducerentur). <40> The fact that the augurs had the duty of making the sacrifices at this augurium canarium can be concluded from the name itself (Philarg. loc. cit. says, in general, sacerdotes publici), and the fact that the rules for the time at which it could take place were found in the commentarii pontificum according to Pliny loc. cit. doesn’t contradict this, since scheduling the festival did in any case fall to these people, regardless of who carried it out. <50> This augural request for good things for their fields at the time when they were in the greatest danger from the heat probably corresponded to another very similar one in spring, which we only know the name of (vernisera auguria) from the augur Messala (in Fest. ep. p. 379), and there were perhaps more of this kind of auguria; the account in Varro de l. l. V 47 seems to be about an augural blessing of the city: sacra via .. per quam augures ex arce profecti solent inaugurare, <60> which seems to be connected to the sacrificium, quod in arce fit ab auguribus adeo remotum a notitia vulgari, ut ne litteris quidem mandetur, sed per memoriam successorum celebretur mentioned by Fest. ep. p. 16; sacred rituals carried out by the augurs on the citadel, where the auguraculum (see there) was, are also mentioned (Valeton Mnemos. XIX 408f.), and in Liv. X 7, 10 augurium ex arce capere is mentioned as something characteristic for an augur. <page break 2329/2330> All these auguria didn’t only involve a question directed to the gods by the augurs (augurium agere, see Cic. de div. I 32; de off. III 66. Varro de l. l. VI 42: augures augurium agere dicuntur, quom in eo plura dicant quam faciant; also Serv. Aen. II 20 auspicari enim cuivis etiam peregre licet, augurium agere nisi in patribus sedibus non licet refers to this augural ritual), <10> but also belonged to the category of augural rituals which Serv. Aen. III 265 per speciem auguralem gives the term invocatio for: invocatio autem est precatio uti avertantur mala, cuius rei causa id sacrificium augurale peragitur; the following are also references to these kinds of sacrifices (about the urceus on augural coins see Marquardt Staatsverw. III 408) and not to the participation of the augurs in auspication: <20> fragments of the libri augurales like Varro de l. l. VII 31 ambiegna bos apud augures, quam circum aliae hostiae constituuntur, and many invocations from the precationes augurum, which had nothing to do with the observation of the signa (Cic. de nat. deor. III 52 in augurum precatione Tiberinum Spinonem Almonem Nodinum alia propinquorum fluminum nomina videmus, cf. Serv. Aen. [corrected from Aein.] VIII 95 Tiberim libri augurum colubrum loquuntur tamquam flexuosum. <30> Fest. p. 157: manes di ab auguribus invocantur quod hi per omnia aetheria terrenaque man<are credantur; idem di su>peri atque inferi <dicebantur, quos ideo invocabant> augures quod hi <existimabantur favere vitae> hominis. Serv. Aen. XII 176: hoc per speciem augurii, quae precatio maxima appellatur, dicit; precatio autem maxima est, cum plures deos, quam in ceteris partibus auguriorum, precantur eventusque rei bonae poscitur), <40> although because of the scarcity and brief nature of the fragments, this categorisation cannot always be made with certainty (eg. for the precatio solitaurilium Fest. p.161).

b) The augurs relating what the auspicia told them

We are very inadequately informed about the category of independent acts done by the augurs which we have handled above, which certainly originally made up a very significant, if not the most important, part of their duties, <50> and this is partially because it was these ritual requirements that were kept strictly secred (Fest. ep. p. 16), but it is more because the focus of augural duties shifted a lot over time when their involvement in gaining and assessing auspices became their main duty for political reasons (hence Cic. de nat. deor. I 122 sacris pontifices .. auspiciis augures praesunt), although their legal standing was a much less independent one here. <60> In the Lex colon. Genet. c. 66, the single duty of the augurs is given as de auspiciis quaeque ad eas res pertinebunt augurum iuris dictio iudicatio esto. Roman law required the majority of more important actions of the state, especially appointing and taking on officials, decisions from the popular assemblies, moving out to war, etc., would happen auspicato, ie. following confirmed agreement from the gods, <page break 2330/2331> and would therefore not happen if the gods didn’t give their agreement or if they took their agreement back before the act was finished by sending clear signs of their disapproval. How the gods’ wills should be questioned and determined, which signs, whether they should be taken in general or whether just for specific state actions, how to deal with overlapping and contradictory signs, <10> all of this is the subject of a complicated discipline which the augurs oversaw the observance of, as experts. The signs of the gods’ will, auguria (or also simply signa), come in different kinds (only a few main points from the discipline of auguria and auspication can be brought up here; outside of the foundational research from Rubino Untersuch. 34ff. and Mommsen Staatsr. I 73ff., cf. the academic and astute observations by I. M. J. Valeton Mnemos. XVII 275ff. 418ff. XVIII 208ff. 406ff.); <20> augural law differentiated five main categories: celestial phenomena, flight of birds, animal signs, tripudium (see there), and signs of doom (Fest. p.261 quin<que genera signorum observant> augures publici, <ex caelo, ex avibus, ex tripudis>, ex quadrupedibus, ex< diris, ut est in auguralibus>; <30> according to how they appeared, they fell into two large classes of auguria impetrativa and oblativa (Serv. Aen. VI 190. XII 259), of which the latter would offer themselves randomly, whereas the former would be requested in a specific legum dictio (Serv. Aen. III 89), in which the one asking would explain that he would consider this or that sign within these or those boundaries as a sign of the gods’ agreement. <40> The auguria impetrativa are, of course, always in agreement (the deity would express their disagreement by not offering the signs in the manner requested in the legum dictio), but the oblativa could just as well be in agreement as in disagreement: at any rate, the dirae were very different - these were all extraordinary and destructive phenomena and incidents <50> - and the interpretation of the other signs was partially dependent on what kind they were (eg. the appearance of many birds, the so-called obscenae aves [Serv. Aen. III 241; cf. Gell. XIII 14, 6], belonged directly to the dirae, Plin. n. h. X 33ff.; about the meaning of individual birds, cf. the collection of sources in L. Hopf Tierorakel und Orakeltiere in alter und neuer Zeit, Stuttgart 1888, 87ff., where, however, the conclusions belonging to augural divination and to other kinds of divination are not separated), and partially dependent on their contents (eg. Plin. n. h. VIII 83 eundem [lupum] in fame vesci terra: inter auguria ad dexteram commeantium praeciso intinere, si pleno id ore fecerit, nullum omnium praestantius), <60> their location (eg. Plaut. Asin. 259f.: impetritum inauguratumst, quovis admittunt aves: picus et cornix ab laeva, corvos parra ab dextera consuadent; cf. Cic. de div. I 85), their direction (eg. lightning going from left to right is auspicium maximum, Dion. Hal. II 5. Cic. de div. II 43. 74. Serv. Aen. II 693), <page break 2331/2332> finally also the act which the sign is referring to (eg. the lightning sign which is otherwise very favourable is unfavourable for holding comitia, Cic. de div. II 74: fulmen sinistrum auspicium optimum habemus ad omnis res praeterquam ad comitia and more in Mommsen Staatsr. I 77, 4). Further complications arose if the signs contradicted each other, like when signs with opposite meanings were observed for the same act, <10> whether it was the case that unfavourable signa oblativa appeared during the relevant act after the auguria impetrativa were obtained, or whether multiple signa oblativa appeared which meant different things; in such cases, there must have been some kind of grading of the auguria according to their importance (Serv. Ecl. IX 13: minora enim auguria maioribus cedunt nec ullarum sunt virium, licet priora sint), <20> like we know, eg., that a lightning sign outdid the signa ex avibus (Cass. Dio XXXVIII 13), and that for the latter, the appearance of an eagle was a particularly high-status augurium (Serv. Aen. III 374 si parra vel picus auspicium dederit, et deinde contrarium aquila dederit, auspicium aquilae praevalet .. notum est esse apud augures auspiciorum gradus plures); further difficulties could come from disruptions of some kind (dirae obstrepentes Plin. n. h. XXVIII 11) during the ritual of auspication, <30> which would necessarily nullify it, even if they got the signs they asked for (eg. Fest. ep. p. 64 caduca auspicia dicunt, quom aliquid in templo excidit, veluti virga e manu. Plin. n. h. VIII 223 soricum occentu dirimi auspicia annales refertos habemus), from the collision of different signs for different observers for different acts (turbare aut retinere auspicia Gell. XIII 15, 4; see Auspicium), <40> from the constraints which the interpretation of the received sign was either subject to in terms of time (only for the day the sign was received from midnight to midnight, Censorin. 23, 4. Gell. III 2, 10 = Macrob. sat. I 3, 7) or in terms of location (the signa impetrativa received extra pomerium for a state act to be completed extra pomerium lost their meaning if the person taking auspices entered the city between auspication and the act being completed, Cic. de nat. deor. II 11 and more about this case in Mommsen Staatsr. I 100, 3; another case in Tac. ann. III 19), etc. <50> Originally, it seems that only the signa ex avibus were asked for as auguria impetrativa, and that the libri augurales were especially rich in rules about this kind of auspication; they contained lists of the aves augurales (Serv. Aen. I 398; augurales alites Marc. Cap. I 26. Amm. Marc. XV 7, 8; Cic. de div. II 76 says that their number was relatively small, cf. Seneca nat. qu. II 32, 5), <60> ordered according to the categories of oscines and alites, where the first one gave their signs through their song, and the latter through their flight (Fest. p. 197 oscines aves Ap. Claudius esse ait, quae ore canentes faciant auspicium, ut corvos cornix noctua, alites, quae alis ac volatu, ut buteo sanqualis aquila immusulus vulturius; picus autem Martius Feroniusque et parra et in oscinibus et in alitibus habentur; cf. Fest. ep. p. 3. Varro. de l. l. VI 76. Plin. n. h. X 43. Cic. nat. deor. II 160; de div. I 120); <page break 2332/2333> both classes were so opposite to each other that the birds which gave favourable signs as oscines were unfavourable as alites, and vice versa (Serv. Aen. IV 462), for the alites, the favourable ones were called praepetes, and the unfavourable inferae (Gell. VII 6, 3. 10. Serv. Aen. III 361) or inebrae (Serv. Aen. III 246, cf. Fest. ep. p. 109); <10> in addition, the augural books also contained a large number of terms for birds, not according to their kinds, but according to the favourable or unfavourable meaning attributed to them (eg. in Fest. ep. p. 7 altera avis, 16 arcula avis, 21 admissivae aves, 276 remores aves, 339 sinistrae aves) or also according to the way in which they appear (Fest. ep. p. 42 circanea avis, 304 supervaganea avis, etc.). The observation of birds goes all the way back beyond the historical time period, <20> just as many other kinds of augurium impetrativum practiced earlier are untraceable (like the auguria ex acuminibus out of practice since M. Claudius Marcellus, Cic. de div. II 77; de nat. deor. II 9. Arnob. II 67, cf. Mommsen Staatsr. I 84, 5), and the pedestra auspicia (Fest. ep. 244) and signa ex quadrupedibus weren’t in use any more, and in Cicero’s time only the signa de caelo and the tripudium were ever really put into practice (Cic. de div. II 71: etenim ut sint auspicia, quae nulla sunt, haec certe, quibus utimur, sive tripudio sive de caelo, simulacra sunt auspiciorum, auspicia nullo modo), both of which were originally only oblative, but later - the observation of lightning in the political and the tripudium (see there) in the military spheres - all the other kinds of auspication of this kind pushed them into the background, such that on the one hand, de caelo servare became a general term for gaining impetrative or oblative auspices (eg. Cic. de div. II 74; de domo 40 etc.), <40> and on the other hand the duty of the pullarius of feeding and observing the chickens necessary for tripudium extended to all the rest of auspication (Cic. de div. II 74; epist. X 12, 3). The reason for these two ways of discovering the will of the gods winning out lay in the convenience of not only their observation, but their avoidance and lore: <50> this is because all auspication of this kind at the end of the republic had become much more superficial, meaning that it was no longer dependent on whether lightning had really fallen or if the sacred chickens had really eaten, but rather it was only dependent on whether this was announced to the official doing the auspices or whether he claimed to have seen it himself; <60> this was at a time in which the augurs themselves could think that what they learnt only contained sapienter ad opinionem imperitorum fictas religiones (Cic. de div. I 105) and was only based on political convenience (retinetur autem et ad opinionem vulgi et ad magnas utilitates reipublicae mos religio disciplina ius augurium, collegii auctoritas ibid. II 70).

This big upheaval in how the signs for the gods’ wills were viewed and treated naturally had a strong influence on the position of the college of augurs, <page break 2333/2334> and it increased its political importance just as much as it decreased the religious substance of its results. Originally, the duty of the augurs relating to auspication, apart from setting up and maintaining the required templa (see below), seems to have been limited in issuing reports by whether the rules of augural law were enough or not for a particular act when there was doubt. <10> If the heavenly signs for a more important state act weren’t observed, or if the auspicia impetrativa had failed, or if auguria oblative of an unfavourable sort had turned up and been reported before the end of the act and hadn’t been dealt with, then the senate would present the matter to the college of augurs (ad augures relatum est Liv. XLV 12, 10; ad collegium deferre Cic. Phil. II 83; augures vocati Liv. XXXIII 21, 13; consulti augures Liv. VIII 23, 14), <20> and after a detailed investigation the college would determine the violation (vitium) through decretum (Liv. IV 7, 3. Cic. de leg. II 31), and if some mistake had been made when obtaining the auguria impetrativa it was with the formula vitio tabernaculum captum esse (Cic. de nat. deor. II 11; de div. I 33 = Val. Max. I 1, 3. Liv. IV 7, 3. Serv. Aen. II 178; cf. Valeton Mnemos. XVIII 243ff.), <30> if auspices hadn’t been taken or if unfavourable auguria oblativa hadn’t been dealt with, then it was with the formula vitio creatum videri (eg. Liv. VIII 15, 6. XXIII 31, 13, cf. VIII 23, 14) or vitio diem dictam esse (Liv. XLV 12, 10) or even leges contra auspicia latas esse (Ascon. p. 61 K.-S.). As Mommsen (Ephem. epigr. III p.101) justifiably highlights, this wasn’t a proper legal action, but instead just an expert opinion which certified that the act of violation was against the sacred code; <40> when Cicero (de leg. II 31) says that augurs have the power to posse decernere, ut magistratu se abdicent consules .. leges non iure rogatas tollere, he is pushing the matter aside, because elected officials would actually usually resign and the laws would often be repealed (not without exceptions, as the case of the consul C. Flaminius in the year 531 = 223 shows, Plut. Marc. 4. Zonar. VIII 20. Liv. XXI 63, 6), <50> but not as an enforcement of an augural judgement, but under the de-facto rather than legal pressure of a decision of the senate supported by the decretum augurum (Mommsen Staatsr. I 112f. III 364ff.). The idea that the augurs would have been able to declare a vitium using their own power without the senate requesting it has not been attested (in both of the cases reported by Cicero de nat. deor. II 11 and epist. X 12, 3 from the years 591 = 163 and 711 = 43, the officials present their worries to the college of augurs because of irregularities that happened at their own auspices themselves - in the first case, the magistrate was also an augur - and the college reported it on to the senate), <60> and it’s not very likely (cf. Bouché-Leclercq in Daremberg-Saglio Diction. I 557). <page break 2334/2335>

If unfavourable oblative auspices weren’t dealt with by the leading magistrate, whether they were actually not dealt with or just allegedly, that would be enough to challenge an act of the state. Of course, legally it was entirely dependent on whether the magistrate had seen such a sign and considered it relevant to his act; in augural law, there was the basic statement neque diras neque ulla auspicia pertinere ad eos, quicumque .. observare se ea negaverint (Plin. n. h. XXVIII 17; cf. Serv. Aen. XII 160 nam in oblativis auguriis in potestate videntis est, utrum id ad se pertinere velit an refutet et abominetur), <10> or quod ego non sensi, nullum mihi vitium facit (Cato in Fest. p. 234), and it was in no way an illoyal act when the consul M. Claudius Marcellus, himself an augur, had himself carried in a covered litter before the battle so he wouldn’t notice unfavourable signs and be hindered by them (Cic. de div. II 77). However, in actual fact there were strict limits on the whims of the magistrates; <20> when one of the most famous statements in augural law orders that Iove tonante fulgurante comitia populi habere nefas (Cic. de div. II 42; cf. in Vatin. 20; Philipp. V 7) it was suspicious for the magistrate leading a popular assembly if there really was lightning during the assembly and ignored it, since he would have been afraid that the matter would be challenged as contra auspicia facta and that the college of augurs would declare it a vitium at the request of the senate. <30> Since these kinds of appeals after the fact were neither in the interests of the state nor the officials who took part, they were prevented by anticipating the augurs’ report to some extent, by calling in augurs to the comitia (perhaps also to other actions of the state) and giving them the right to legally confirm that unfavourable oblative auspices had appeared and to prevent the act from being continued for that day (diem vitiare Fest. p. 234); <40> the magistrate’s right to notice signs on his part which would put off the assembly still remained intact, and wasn’t put under the control of the augur (cf. Plut. Cato min. 42; Pomp. 52), however, if the augur was inclined to have noticed a sign of this kind or assumed it had happened because of reports from other sources, his declaration would be uncontestable: <50> if he said alio die (Cic. de leg. II 31; Phil. II 83f.), then the assembly would be dissolved (Mommsen Staatsr. III 415, 6). We don’t know when this right of nuntiatio (Cic. Phil. II 81 nos enim nuntiationem solum habemus, consules et reliqui magistratus etiam spectionem. Fest. p. 333, the latter source is heavily corrupted, see how Valeton Mnemos. XVIII 455f. tries to reconstruct it), <60> which should be strictly differentiated from the magistrates’ right of obnuntiatio (see there and Valeton Mnemos. XIX 75ff. 229ff.; obnuntiare only used of the augurs in Donat. on Ter. Ad. IV 2, 8 proprie obnuntiare dicuntur augures, qui aliquid mali ominis scaevumque viderint), was given to the augurs; in any case, it should be considered to have been given later, its known uses (collected by Valeton loc. cit. 94ff.) all fall in the last century of the republic. <page break 2335/2336> The official state of being in action of the augur serving in the comitia was called in auspicio esse (Cic. ad Att. II 12, 1. Messala in Gell. XIII 15, 4; when Cic. ad Att. II 7, 2 refers to those who had been in auspicio at the comitia curiata as auspices legis curiatae, this is a deliberately chosen expression); there could also have been multiple augurs present (Varro de re r. III 7, 1; three in Cic. ad Att. IV 18, 2); <10> however, as Valeton Mnemos. XVIII 454 supposes, the idea that it wasn’t one augur’s decision but a majority vote from the augurs present that would determine if the assembly should be dissolved should not be assumed (Cic. de leg. II 31 clearly states rem susceptam dirimi si unus augur ‘alio die’ dixerit), and is in no way attested by the fact that in some cases, a single augur is concerned about stating alio die sine collegis (Cic. Phil. V 7). <20> It’s significant that the one or more augurs present at the comitia were not limited in their actions to one hypothetical nuntiatio, but instead they functioned as assistants to the magistrates there; according to the story in Varro de r. r. III 2, 2 (at comitia tributa) the augur Ap. Claudius sits in subselliis, ut consuli, si quid usus poposcisset, esset praesto and afterwards III 7, 1 venit apparitor Appi a consule et augures ait citari, ille foras exit e villa; <30> according to Varro de l. l. VI 95, the augur was also at the consul’s side when the people were invited to vote, read the formula aloud for him, and invited the people to vote at his request (augur consuli adest tum cum exercitus imperatur ac praeit, quid eum dicere oporteat; consul auguri imperare solet, ut inlicium vocet), and indeed Varro explicitly adds that things had been done differently before and that the invitation was done by the praeco (or an accensus) (cf. Mommsen Staatsr. III 398). <40> Here, then, the augurs had taken on duties which were entirely unfamiliar to them. It cannot be determined with full certainty whether they also took part in obtaining the auguria impetrativa in later times. Originally, it was certainly not the case: requesting the sign from the heavens (spectio) was only the duty of a magistrate who wanted clarity to support his own observations (in auspicium adhibere Cic. de div. II 72 and in auspicio esse ibid. 71, auspicio interesse or adesse Liv. X 40, 4. 11), <50> and since people have previously often assumed that this clarity was primarily or often augurs (eg. Rubino loc. cit. 57ff.), then Valeton (Mnemos. XVIII 406ff.) has justifiably traced it back: when Cicero de div. II 71 says apud maiores nostros adhibebatur peritus, nunc quilibet, with the word peritus he does not mean the augur, <60> and in the expression in de rep. II 16 (Romulus) omnibus publicis rebus instituendis, qui sibi essent in auspiciis, ex singulis tribubus singulos cooptavit augures the words qui sibi essent in auspiciis certainly do not have to refer to assistance in gaining the impetrative signs; <page break 2336/2337> instead, the fact that the augurs could call on people on their part to be administri in auspicio (Cic. de leg. III 43 est autem boni auguris meminisse .. Iovique optimo maximo se consiliarium atque administrum datum, ut sibi eos quos in auspicio esse iusserit), speaks against the assumption that there could have been such administri of the officials taking the auspices on their part. However, the possibility must be left open that at the end of the republic, when they were obtaining the auguria impetrativa, the augurs didn’t act completely as helpers, but acted in place of the magistrates, <10> like in the story - which isn’t evidenced at all for older time periods - in Liv. IV 18, 6 where the dictator Mam. Aemilius doesn’t begin the battle at the gate of the city before the augurs have given him a sign from the citadel to say that the impetrative auspicia have been shared. Either way, in his ideal legislation (de leg. II 20), <20> Cicero seems to have the augurs participate in auspices in this way, perhaps going beyond current law on this point to improve his priesthood; since if the words divorumque iras providento sisque apparento doubtless refer to the nuntiation of unfavourable oblative auguria (dirae = deorum irae, Serv. Aen. IV 453. Fest. ep. p. 69), <30> then the preceding quique agent rem duelli quique popularem auspicium praemonento ollique obtemperanto cannot refer to anything other than the impetrative auguria just because of praemomento (III 11 qui agent auspicia servanto, auguri publico parento both kinds of auguria are not differentiated), and even the declaration § 31 that it was the augurs’ duty cum populo cum plebe agendi ius aut dare aut non dare can easily only be understood by them.

c) The augurs with regards to establishing and managing the templa

Obtaining auspicia can only happen in a templum, <40> ie. a location determined and bordered-off following the rules of the discipline of augury (Gell. XIV 7, 7 in loco per augurem constituto, quod templum appellaretur. Serv. Aen. XI 235 augurato condita loca etc.; not auspicato, as it is imprecisely called in eg. Tac. hist. III 72); since the number of state acts in which auspicato have to be carried out is a very large one, and since for each of them the auspices had to be taken in the same place where the act was going to be undertaken (see below Auspicium), <50> then the number of such templa is an extraordinarily large one (abundant sources in Valeton Mnemos. XXIII 24ff.). Setting them up and managing them was the duty of the augurs. The teachings of the templum (see there), understanding which has became very vague for newer people by mixing it up with limitation (see there), will not be handled here, and only the teachings relevant to the acts and teaching of the augurs will be mentioned. <60> The augural ritual through which a place is made a templum (augurare Liv. VIII 5, 8; inaugurare Cic. Vatin. 24; de domo 137. Serv. Aen. VII 174 etc.) was referred to with the words liberare et effare (only in passive) locum. Serv. Aen. I 446 ita templa faciebant ut .. per augures locus liberaretur effareturque. Here, liberare refers to all other pending sacred duties being removed from the relevant location, <page break 2337/2338> as well as the requirements which were replaced (exaugurantur, Cato in Fest. p. 162 fana in eo loco compluria fuere; ea exauguravit, praeterquam quod Termino fanum fuit; id nequitum exaugurari; cf. Liv. I 55, 2f. V 54, 7. Serv. Aen. II 351), while by effari (loca sacra id est ab auguribus inaugurata effata dici Serv. Aen. III 463f; ad templum effandum Cic. ad Att. XIII 42, 3), <10> these same requirements were marked out, so to speak, from the rest of the terrain (roughly the same as fando eximere); therefore, effari must have referred to marking out the borders (Varro de l. l. VI 53 effari templa dicuntur ab auguribus, effantur qui in his fines sunt; with the same sense as effatus, there is quibusdam conceptis verbis finitus ibid. VII 8); it has been attested many times (Fest. p. 157 locus ita effatus aut ita saeptus. Liv. X 37, 15 in contrast to aedes: fanum tantum, id est locus templo effatus) that the boundary was not a physical one, <20> but was only given by the ideal lines described in the augurs’ prayers (proprie effata sunt augurm preces Serv. Aen. VI 197). Of course, the formula for the prayer was different according to the location (concipitur verbis non isdem usque quaque Varro de l. l. VII 8); for those which separated the templum in arce, <30> ie. the place which served for the independent cult-acts of the augurs and the observations of the heaven connected with those, the auguraculum, Varro loc. cit. has preserved the beginning of it from the augural books (the words show that it isn’t any more than this; on its establishment, cf. Jordan Krit. Beitr. z. Gesch. d. latein. Sprache 89ff.), which allow us to see that people would make use of specific things in the terrain, like eg. trees, to mark out the corners of the templum, <40> which would then be considered connected to each other by straight lines (the general view relates Varro’s account to the border not of the space for observation, but of the line of sight, eg. Nissen Templum 4. Valeton Mnemos. XVII 280f.). We don’t know anything about the rest of the nature of the ceremony, <50> and we also don’t know if it happened after omens had already been requested (which Valeton Mnemos. XX 356ff. considers to be obvious; but it isn’t evidenced by Varro de l. l. VII 6 templum .. ab auspicando, though it may be by Liv. 55, 3, where the exauguratio takes place from the observation of birds on the sacella which would later lie on the Capitoline, if we can rely on such a detail from this story); after the inauguration was complete, a sign in the form of a star would be brought to the location (Fest. p. 351 stellam quae ex lamella aerea adsimilis stellae locis inauguratis infigatur). <60> The inauguration itself was only carried out once, and it made the location a locus liberatus et effatus for the foreseeable future; however, this consecration could be destroyed by unholy influences, in which case the ceremony would have to be redone; the augurs had to take care that this happened if necessary, templa liberata et effata habento, as Cicero says; though people often understood liberata habere to mean a clear field of view (Marquardt Staatsverw. III 409), <page break 2338/2339> linguistically the words would certainly not be able to mean this, and such a clear field of view was just not possible for most templa - consider the many inaugurated places in the city; only the auguraculum in arce was protected as an observation place for the augurs themselves with the removal of disturbing buildings from view (Cic. de off. III 66; cf. Fest. p. 344). <10> The use of the lines Cardo and Decumanus which was crucial for limitation had nothing to do with these augural boundaries, but the prescribed shape of the templum is a quadrilateral one (Fest. p. 157 templum est locus .. ut .. angulosque IIII - as Valeton Mnemos. XX 369, angulos quod ms. - adfixos habeat ad terram. Serv. Aen. II 512 Varro locum quattuor angulis conclusum aedem docet vocari debere, where clearly the words aedes and templum have been swapped by Servius), <20> and because of this, the round aedes Vestae is not one of the many places of worship which were also templa (Gell. XIV 7, 7. Serv. Aen. VII 153). However, as it seems, there were also loca liberata et effata which were not templa and which therefore didn’t have to have the usual form of a quadrilateral; there’s no doubt that Roman encampments and the city itself were loca effata, but they are never described as templa. <30> The term ager effatus refers to the areas outside the city within which it was still possible to observe auspicia for civil affairs (Varro de l. l. VI 53 augures finem auspiciorum caelestium agris sunt effati ubi esset. Serv. Aen. VI 197: ager post pomeria, ubi captabantur auguria, dicebatur effatus); this ager effatus is probably identical with the zone also constitutionally defined as being up to the first milestone, <40> which was the border of the jurisdiction of civil officials (Mommsen Staatsr. I 65ff.) and which the staging and therefore also the auspication of the comitia centuriata were connected to. For the augurs, the ager Romanus was different from this (Varro de l. l. V 33 ut nostri augures publici disserunt, agrorum sunt genera quinque: Romanus, Gabinus, peregrinus, hosticus, incertus .. peregrinus ager pacatus, qui extra Romanum et Gabinum, quod uno modo in his seruntur auspicia .. Gabinus quoque peregrinus, sed quod auspicia habet singularia, ab reliquo discretus; cf. vol. I p.780ff.),<50> whose borders were only important for the auspices because a dictator could only be appointed inside them (Liv. XXVII 5, 15. 29, 5). Inside the ager effatus, a narrower line described the area for the auspicia urbana in a stricter sense, ie. the places where the acts at the ground of the city could take place (eg. comitia curiata) and have their auspices; this is the pomerium (see there), which augural teachings defined as (Gell. XIII 14, 1) pomerium est locus intra agrum effatum per totius urbis circuitum pone muros regionibus certeis determinatus, qui facit finem urbani auspicii (Varro de l. l. V 143 postmoerium .. eoque auspicia urbana finiuntur) and declared effati urbi fines (Gell. loc. cit. § 4, incorrectly related to the ager effatus by Mommsen Röm. Forsch. II 28). <page break 2339/2340> This pomerium, which a lot of the regulations of the disciplina auguralis (ius pomerii Cic. de div. II 75) were tied up with, was called cippi (Varro loc. cit. cippi pomeri stant et circum Ariciam et circum Romam), <10> and when Cicero requires that the augurs urbemque et agros et templa (what we have just presented is enough to show how unjustified the deletion of the et before templa is, which recommended by Goerenz and is often accepted) liberata et effata habento, he is assigning them duty over keeping up the pomerium as well as the stones that indicate the borders of the ager effatus; the fact that they really did carry this out is shown by the inscription on the cippi on the pomerium set up under Hadrian with regards to a restitution: ex s(enatus) c(onsulto) collegium augurum auctore imp(eratore) Caesare .. Hadriano .. terminos pomerii restituendos curavit (CIL VI 1233 and on this Hülsen Hermes XXII 615ff.). <20> In general, on the inauguration (ie. liberari and effari) of places, cf. the in-depth articles by I. M. J. Valeton Mnemos. XX 338ff. XXI 62ff. 397ff. XXIII 15ff. (however, the description given here is very different from his interpretation) and see the articles templum and pomerium. <30>

Despite Valeton’s (Mnemos. XVII 275ff.) academic research, it seems more than uncertain whether we are justified in considering the field of view, which the magistrate looked over during auspication and within which he would wait for the requested sign after the legum dictio, as a templum. However, as well as the templum which the person taking the auspices would observe from (the so-called templum minus Fest. p. 157; the comparative shows that there was at least one more templum other than this one), <40> there was another templum, the celestial dome (Varro de l. l. VII 7: caelum .. dictum templum .. eius templi partes quattuor dicuntur, sinistra ab oriente, destra ab occasu, antica ad meridiem, postica ad septentrionem; cf. Serv. Aen. I 91 templum dicitur locus manu designatus in aere, post quem factum ilico captantur auguria), within which four partes or regiones - the dextra and sinistra, and the antica and postica - were differentiated and marked out before the signs would appear <50> (Varro loc. cit. Serv. Ecl. IX 15 augures designant spatia lituo et eis dant nomina, ut prima pars dicatur anterior, posterior postica, item dextra et sinistra. Fest. ep. p. 220: ea caeli pars, quae sole illustratur ad meridiem, antica nominatur, quae ad septentrionem, postica; rursumque dividuntur in duas partes, orientem et occidentem). <60> This act of marking-out the sections of the sky was called designare caeli spatia (Serv. Aen. VII 187 lituus .. quo utebantur ad designanda caeli spatia; Ecl. IX 15; Aen. VI 191 moris erat, ut captantes auguria certa sibi spatia designarent, quibus volebant videnda ad se pertinere) or caeli partes (Serv. Aen. IX 4 post designatas caeli partes a sedentibus captantur auguria. Isid. orig. XV 4, 7; cf. Liv. I 18, 7) or regiones (Cic. de div. I 31 regionum discriptio; cf. § 30 regiones direxit. Liv. I 18, 7. Plut. Rom. 22 τὰ πλινθία διαγράφειν; Cam. 32 τὰς τῶν πλινθίων ὑπογραφάς), <page break 2340/2341> and was never the job of the magistrate taking the auspices, but instead it was always the augur who did it (especially for the augurium sacerdotii Liv. I 18, 7: augur ad laevam eius capite velato sedem cepit, dextra manu baculum sine nodo aduncum tenens, quem lituum appellarunt. inde ubi prospectu in urbem agrumque capto deos precatus regiones ab oriente ad occasum determinavit, dextras ad meridiem partes, laevas ad septentrionem esse dixit, signum contra, quoad longissime conspectum oculi ferebant, animo finivit), <10> and the fact that only the augur could carry this out can already be concluded from the fact that, according to the accounts from the ancients which are in agreement, it was the lituus which was used to designare regiones, which only the augurs and not the magistrates would have (Valeton Mnemos. XVIII 256ff.). Accordingly, this specific way of observing the sky, <20> where the signs have different meanings according to which partes caeli they appear in, was not used for magistrates’ auspices, but for the cult rituals the augurs had (auguria) to do with observing the sky (in Cic. de div. I 30, Romulus also acts as augur). The matter of how the celestial temple was oriented should be handled in the article templum; <30> however, it must be highlighted here that if the augur was always the one to determine what was right, left, forward, and backward for him (Liv. loc. cit. dextras ad meridiem partes, laevas ad septentrionem esse dixit, words which Regell Jahrb. f. Philol. CXXIII 1881, 618ff. wants to delete, with hardly any justification), then it would suggest that different orientations were possible and that they would always have to decide which one to use. <40> In fact, the southern orientation (antica south, postica north, dextra west, sinistra east) is just as well attested as the eastern orientation (antica east, postica west, dextra south, sinistra north), the first by Varro (loc. cit. and Fest. p. 339 Varro libro V epistulicarum quaestionum ait: a deorum sede cum in meridiem spectes, ad sinistram sunt partes mundi exorientes, ad dextram occidentes) and Verrius Flaccus (Fest. ep. p. 220; cf. also the ad meridiem spectans in the story of Attus Navius in Cic. de div. I 31), <50> and the latter not only by Livy loc. cit.’s story about Numa’s inauguration, but also by other sources independent of Livy (Serv. Aen. II 693 sinistras partes septentrionales esse augurum disciplina consentit et ideo ex ipsa parte significantiora esse fulmina. Isid. orig. XV 4, 7 sed et locus designatus ad orientem a conteplatione templum dicebatur; cuius partes quattuor erant, antica ad ortum, postica ad occasum, sinistra ad septentrionem, dextra ad meridiem spectans; cf. also Dion. Hal. II 5). <60> So, both orientations must have been around alongside each other; however, when Regell (loc. cit. 607ff., incorrectly endorsed by me in Marquardt Staatsverw. III 403, 1) decides to make the distinction that the eastern orientation was for the templa in terra (‘terrestrial temples’) for observing the flight of birds and that the southern orientation was for templa in caelo (‘observation temples’), <page break 2341/2342> or when Valeton (Mnemos. XVII 275ff.) assigns the eastern orientation to the field of view bordered off every time by the legum dictio (templum aerium) and the southern orientation to the templum caeleste which is bordered off once and for all, <10> these hypotheses are already invalid because the sources based on the libri augurales (the story of the famous auspices taken by Attus Navius does not belong to these) are only aware of a designatio partium or descriptio regionum - ie. an orientation, whatever its direction - in relation to the celestial temple. And with this, we can also see that this kind of observation was limited to lightning (though the Greek sources in this context speak of the οἰωνοῖς μαντευόμενοι Dion. Hal. II 5, ἐπ’ ὄρνισι διαμαντευόμενοι Plut. Cam. 32, ἐπ’ οἰωνῶν καθεζόμενοι Plut. Rom. 22 etc., this doesn’t offer any contradictions, because they are only translating qui augurium agunt), <20> since auguria caelestia (Fest. ep. p. 64, cf. de caelo servare etc.) technically only refer to lightning signs (as well as thunder and other appearances in the sky, of course) in contrast to the rest of the signa, in particular those ex avibus. So, it is entirely correct when Cicero gives the augurs the following rule: caelique fulgura regionibus ratis temperanto, <30> and in other places (de leg. III 43) this then makes sense of the fact that a capable augur should not forget caeli partes sibi definitas esse traditas, e quibus saepe opem rei publicae ferre possit. The lack of material makes it unsurprising that we don’t know how this celestial observation according to regions took place at augural rituals, nor what the choice of a southern or eastern orientation would entail <40>

VI. Augurs outside of Rome

The fact that the art of investigating the will of the gods through augurs and their disciplina wasn’t a peculiarity of the Romans, but was something common to all Italy, is shown by the Umbrian ritual of the Iguvine tablets, in which we find the same kind of observation of the flight of birds (whose lore Cic. de div. I 94 praises the Umbrians for) and bordering off templa (Buecheler Umbrica 42ff. 84ff.). However, there doesn’t seem to have been a priesthood which exactly corresponded to the augurs in Iguvium <50> since the priest who carried out the act of augury, the adfertur (arsfertur), had a much more general area of service and was also a sacrificial priest (Buecheler loc. cit. 29 translates it with flamen). Furthermore, when Cicero often makes mention of the augur Soranus (de div. I 105) and Marsus augur (De div. I 132. II 70), these are not priests, but soothsayers, and as the rude way he mentions them shows, <60> they represented a kind of divination which was fundamentally different from the Roman discipline of augury and which was of a much lower status (cf. later the Pannoniaci augures Hist. Aug. Sept. Sev. 10, 7; Alex. Sev. 27, 6). And so, even though we find the title of augur attested a very large number of times in Italian cities, these are never remains of the priesthood developing independently of Rome, but are directly transferred from Rome there. <page break 2342/2343> This is because the transmission of institutions from the city of Rome to the coloniae civium Romanorum is also made clear by the fact that they were fitted out with the priesthoods of pontifices and augurs following Roman models. The most useful in this regard are the stipulations of the Lex coloniae Iuliae Genetivae (CIL II Suppl. 5439; see also Mommsen’s Commentar Ephem. epigr. III p.99ff.). <10> According to this, the founder should appoint augurs when establishing the colony, without them being legally limited in number; however, in the time that followed, they were appointed such there there were never more than three in the collegium. Appointing (sublegito cooptato c. 67) the new augurs took place with a vote in the comitia under the duoviri in the same way as the duoviri were appointed (c. 66. 67); the only condition for being elected was that they had to have the right of citizenship in the colony, and they had to have residency there, <20> or rather have residency there for the next five years after the colony was established, otherwise the duoviri would be allowed to cross off the relevant name from the list of priests (c. 91 quicumque decurio augur pontifex huiusque col(oniae) domicilium in ea col(onia) oppido propiusve it oppidum p(assus) (mille) non habebit annis V proxumis, unde pignus eius quot satis sit capi possit, is in ea col(lonia) augur pontif(ex) decurio ne esto, qui[q]ue IIviri in ea col(onia) erunt eius nomen de decurionibus sacerdotibusque de tabulis publicis eximendum curanto); <30> the office was lifelong, except in the case of a damnatio (c. 67 in demortui damnative loco). The privileges of the augurs was the same as in Rome, vacatio muneris et militiae for themselves and their children, praetexta and ius inter decuriones spectandi at the public games (c. 66, cf. above p.2321). <40> The many mentions of municipal augurs from Italy and the provinces in inscriptions, which V. Spinazzola has recently [as of 1894] collected and spoken about in detail in Ruggiero Dizion. epigr. I 795ff., offer a few extra details here. In Thamugadi the total number of augurs seems to have been four (CIL VIII 2403), while the total of ten augurs from the republic mentioned at the founding of the colony Capua (Cic. de leg. agr. II 96) was only an extraordinary and temporary increase. <50> In place of the elections by the comitia, which Modestinus Dig. XLVIII 14, 1, 1 still mentions, they would be appointed by the decuriones in some places (in Puteoli Ephem. epigr. VIII 372 .. placere huic ordini Mario Sedato … [ho]norem auguratus decerni; cf. CIL V 6428. X 5914. Orelli 2287); donations of money ob honorem auguratus are sometimes mentioned (CIL III 4495. IX 32. XII 410), most of the time they seem to have been in Africa, <60> where the inscriptions speak of a summa legitima (CIL VIII 7990 sestertium XXXIV milia inibi legitima ob honorem auguratus rei publicae intulit; cf. VIII 8310 statuam, quam ob honorem auguratus sui ex sestertium sex milibus nummum super ligitimam promiserat) and mention promises of money made before the elections (CIL VIII 4235. 4250. Eph. epigr. VII 760). <page break 2343/2345> The fact that the office was lifelong is confirmed by the lack of iteration numbers and auguralicii; the mention of an augur perpetuus in Massilia (CIL XII 410) and in Rusuccuru in Mauretania (CIL VIII 8995) cannot prove the rule wrong (see Spinazzola loc. cit. 798). The admission of a freedman is attested once (Eph. epigr. VIII 369 from Puteoli), and taking on the title of augur in two colonies at the same time is attested multiple times (CIL III 1141. 1209). <10> In the majority of cases, the augurate would be combined with other municipal priesthoods and local services (Spinazzola loc. cit. 799ff.), and those who had these duties would belong to the municipal aristocracy, and often also to the equestrian ranks. On the duties of the municipal augurs, the lex. col. Genet. c. 66 only says de auspiciis quaeque ad eas res pertinebunt augurum iuris dictio iudicatio esto; <20> the fact that the act of obtaining auspicia de caelo hadn’t completely disappeared in the municipia during the empire is shown by the inscription of Apisa maior in Africa CIL VIII 774 Deo loci ubi auspicium dignitatis tale .. with the depiction of a lightning strike, though CIL II 5078 (an epitaph from Augusta Emerita) L. Valerius L. l(ibertus) Auctus avium inspex blaesus cannot prove anything for the observation of birds, since this isn’t referring to a priest here; despite the words ἐπ’ οἰωνοῖς καθήμενος (see above p.2342), the type of the observed σημεῖα cannot be determined in the story of the augur C. Cornelius from Patavium in Plut. Caes. 47,<30> according to Lucan. VII 197ff. they were signa de caelo.

Literature has been referenced in individual passages; in general, cf. Marquardt Staatsverw. III 397ff. (there p.397, 3 as well as older literature). A. Bouché-Leclercq in Daremberg-Saglio Dict. I 550ff.

[Wissowa.]

This article is referenced by: Limitatio, Spectio