The Religious Experience of the Roman People Part 25

[612] Cato, _R.R._ ch. 54; cp. Columella, i. 8 and xi.

1.

[613] See P. Regell, _De augurum publicorum libris_, p.

6 "Omnia illa auguria quae futurarum rerum aliquid predic.u.n.t ... augurum publicorum disciplinae abroganda sunt: aut privati sunt augurii, aut Tuscorum disciplinae." Cp. Cic. _de Har. Resp._ 9. 18.

[614] Cic. _de Div._ i. 16. 28; Val. Max. ii. 1. 1.

[615] _La Religione nella vita domestica_, i. 153 foll.; 232 foll.

[616] Cic. _de Div._ i. 16, 28.

[617] This fragment is preserved in Gellius vii. 6. 10.

Nigidius may be responsible for many of Pliny's omens.

Regell, _op. cit._ p. 8.

[618] Hor. _Odes_, iii. 27. 1 foll.

[619] Exactly the same misfortune occurred in the middle ages. The monks had abundant opportunity of observation, but were occupied with other matters, and have left behind them no works on natural history.

[620] See above, p. 169 foll.

[621] Livy vi. 12.

[622] See the fragment of Ennius' _Annales_ in Cic. _de Div._ i. 107.

[623] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 450; _Lex coloniae Genetivae_, 66 and 67.

[624] Livy vi. 41.

[625] See a good account in the _Dict. of Antiquities_, vol. i. 252 and 255; and Wissowa in Pauly-Wissowa, _s.v._ "auspicia."

[626] _Roman Public Life_, p. 162.

[627] Wissowa, _R.K._ 451, note 2; Marq. 241.

[628] Mommsen, _Staatsrecht_, i. 86.

[629] Wissowa, _R.K._ 451, note 7; Plut. _Quaest. Rom._ 99; Pliny, _Ep._ 4. 8. Plutarch asks why an augur can never be deprived of his office, and answers that the secrecy of his art made it impossible. Cp. Paulus, 16.

[630] The latest authoritative account of the auspicia is in Pauly-Wissowa, _s.v._, where the necessary literature and material will be found for a study of an extremely complicated subject.

[631] The technical term was _templum minus_, in contradistinction to the _templum maius_, _i.e._ the s.p.a.ce in which he was to look for signs. See Bouche-Leclercq, iv. 197; Fest. 157. The usual place was the _arx_, where was the _auguraculum_, on which the magistrate taking the auspices "pitched his tent"

(_tabernaculum_), looking to the east, with the north as his left or lucky side. Von Jhering, _op. cit._ p. 364, makes some ingenious use of this procedure to support his theory that the origin of such inst.i.tutions is to be found in the period of migration.

[632] That the division of the _templum_ into _regiones_ was necessary only for the _auguria caelestia_, and not for the observation of birds, is the conclusion drawn by Wissowa (_R.K._ 457, note 2) from the words of Cicero (_de Legibus_, ii. 21) in his _ius divinum_: "caelique fulgura regionibus ratis temperanto" (_i.e._ the magistrates).

[633] Cicero expressly says that even old Cato complained of the neglect of the auspicia by the college: _de Div._ i. 15. 28; above, in sec. 25, he had said the same thing of the augurs of his own day, _i.e._ including himself. We know of a work on the _auspicia_ by M. Messalla, an augur, from which Gellius, xiii. 15, quotes a lengthy extract (cp. ch. 14). This man was consul in 53 B.C.; Schanz, _Gesch. der rom. Lit._, ii.

492. Just at the same time Appius Claudius, Cicero's predecessor as governor of Cilicia, wrote _libri augurales_, to which Cicero more than once alludes in his correspondence with Appius: _ad Fam._ iii. 9. 3 and 11. 4. It is plain that the old augural lore is now treated only as a curiosity, of which the secrecy need no longer be respected.

[634] P. Regell, _De augurum publicorum libris_, whose excellent little work has never been superseded, thinks (p. 19) that the _libri_ were the result of the neglect of the art, _i.e._ that it was necessary to put it in writing, because otherwise it would be forgotten. "Tota eius vita," he says, "lenta est mors." The lore was complete about the time of the decemvirate, but _decreta_ must have been continually added (p. 23). The nucleus may be represented in Cicero, _de Legibus_, ii.

20. 21, and perhaps existed in Saturnian verse (Festus, 290). The additions in the way of decree or comment would probably range over the fourth and third centuries B.C. like those of the pontifices. No doubt the Hannibalic war had the effect of diminishing the importance of the lore, as the next lecture should show.

On the whole we may put the great period of the college between the decemvirate and the war with Hannibal.

[635] This is the opinion of Bouche-Leclercq, _op. cit._ vol. iv. p. 205 foll.; cp. Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 457.

Cicero calls the augurs "interpretes Iovis Optimi maximi" (_de Legibus_, ii. 20), and herein could hardly have made a mistake, as he was himself an augur. As the great deity was of Etruscan origin in this form, I should conjecture that the college took new ground and gained new influence under the Etruscan dynasty.

[636] Cp. also Muller-Deecke, _Die Etrusker_, ii. 165 foll. Our knowledge comes chiefly from the learned but obscure writer Martia.n.u.s Capella (ed. Eyssenhardt), who wrote under the later Empire.

[637] For these meetings see Cic. _de Div._ i. 41. 90; Regell, p. 23. They were obsolete in Cicero's time, but seem to have still existed in the time of Scipio Aemilia.n.u.s: Cic. _Lael._ 2. 7.

[638] _Staatsrecht_, i. 73 foll.; Greenidge, _Roman Public Life_, p. 172 foll.

[639] The best account of the const.i.tutional power of the augurs is in Pauly-Wissowa, _Real-Encyclopadie_, _s.v._ "augur," vol. i. p. 2334 foll.; cp. Wissowa, _R.K._ 457-8.

[640] _De Legibus_, ii. 21.

[641] The outward form of _co-optatio_ was still preserved, like our "election" of a bishop by a chapter.

Cicero was co-opted by Hortensius after nomination by two other augurs. See his interesting account of this in his _Brutus_, ch. i. The survival may be taken as throwing light on the original secrecy and closeness of the _collegium_.

[642] For the _leges Aelia et Fufia_, cf. Greenidge, _op. cit._ p. 173. The Stoics of the last century B.C.

were divided on this point. See below, p. 399. In the second book of his _de Divinatione_, following the Academic or agnostic school, he himself confutes his brother Quintus' argument for divination contained in Bk. I.

[643] This is the view of Thulin, _Die Gotter des Martia.n.u.s Capella und der Bronzeleber von Piacenza_ (Giessen, 1906), p. 7 foll., and it seems at present to hold the field: see Gruppe, _Die mythologische Literatur aus den Jahren 1898-1905_, p. 336.

[644] Muller-Deecke, vol. ii. p. 7 foll.

[645] See Deecke's note on p. 12 of Muller-Deecke, vol.

ii. It is possibly connected with _hariolus_.

[646] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 470, and Muller-Deecke, vol.

ii. 165 foll.

[647] See above, note 50.

[648] References to Livy will be found in Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 473, note 11. One of these, to Livy xxvii. 16.

14, is worth quoting as suggesting that a _haruspex_ might give useful advice in spite of his art: "Hostia quoque caesa consulenti (Fabio) deos haruspex, cavendum a fraude hostili et ab insidiis, praedixit."

[649] They were not _sacerdotes publici Romani_, nor is a _collegium_ mentioned till the reign of Claudius: Tac.

_Ann._ xi. 15. The proper term seems to have been _ordo_, which occurs in inscriptions of the Empire: Marq. p. 415.

[650] typo fixed: 54: See the oration _De haruspic.u.m responsis_ (especially 5. 9), the genuineness of which is now generally acknowledged. Asconius quotes it as Cicero's (ed. Clark, p. 70): so also Quintilian, v. 11.

42.

[651] Tac. _Ann._ 11. 15.

[652] The _haruspices_ mentioned in inscriptions (above, note 56) were not the genuine article; they were Romans and _equites_. Probably this was only one of the many ways of finding dignity or employment for persons of good birth under the Empire.

[653] _Cod. Theod._ xvi. 10. 1 (of the year 321 A.D.), quoted by Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 475, note 1. In ix. 16. 3.