Reading Room · Fortune-Telling Methods · Method
How did the Romans read birds and entrails?
Romans read birds by augury, watching the flight and feeding of sacred chickens and the calls of birds, and read entrails by haruspicy, examining a sacrificial victim's liver, heart, lungs and the victim's movement and fire. Public officials consulted haruspices on prodigies.
Facts checked on against 6 sources, 5 of them museum, university, archive, library, government or primary texts.
Key facts
Every line comes from a source listed at the bottom of the page. The small numbers point to it.
| Early Rome | Dunlop states that in the early ages of Rome, a band of Patrician youths was sent to Etruria to be initiated in the mysteries of its religious rites.1 |
|---|---|
| Early Rome (legendary account) | According to Cicero, the Tuscan art of divination began with a child who sprang from a clod of earth turned up by a plough, and Romulus borrowed the institution of the Aruspices from the Tuscans.2 |
| 319 CE | Constantine published a severe law against soothsayers that did not extend to public consultations of the Haruspices according to established rites.3 |
| c. 321 CE | Constantine wrote to Maximus, prefect of Rome, ordering that after lightning struck a palace or public monument, the auguries be consulted according to the ancient rites and the accounts sent to him.3 |
| 385 CE | Theodosius proclaimed the death penalty against those who inquired into futurity by consulting the entrails of victims or by execrable and magic consultations.3 |
| 493 to 526 CE | Theodoric the Great, king of Italy, published an edict forbidding under pain of death sacrifice by Pagan rites and other superstitious practices.3 |
Augury: reading birds and other omens
Augury derives from the Latin augurium, meaning the observation and interpretation of omens. Kiesewetter's Roman chapter says augurs observed the flight of birds, and that the augural observation of birds, lightning and similar signs was called augurium.45
The most common method of taking augury was watching how sacred chickens fed and how they took offered corn. Augurs also drew omens from the chattering or singing of birds, the hooting of crows, pies and owls, and from beasts that ran across the way or appeared in unusual places.2
Augury was generally taken upon an eminence, and was not taken after March because of the moulting season of birds, at the waning of the moon, or in the afternoon.2
Augury recognized two kinds of omen: one watched lightning, bird flights and cries, and the behaviour of sacred chickens, and the other focused on unexpected appearances of sacred animals, unintentional spilling of salt, sneezing and similar signs.4
Döderlein distinguishes augurium, the signs interpreted by members of the college of augurs, from auspicium, the signs taken by magistrates who held the right to take auspices. Omina were signs that any person could interpret without help, while prodigium, ostentum, portentum and monstrum were appearances outside the ordinary course of nature that a soothsayer interpreted more exactly.6
Haruspicy: reading the entrails
Haruspicy was the Roman inspection of the entrails of sacrificial victims, called haruspicium, and its practitioners were the haruspices. Döderlein separates exta, the inner organs of the upper body such as the heart and lungs, from intestina and ilia, the entrails of the lower body.56
Haruspices examined the liver first. A bright red lobe free of blemish was read as prognosticating great prosperity, while a livid, small or corrupted lobe presaged the most fatal mischiefs. The heart, spleen, gall and lungs were also read, and any that were rank, bloated, livid or withered signalled misfortune.2
The victim's behaviour was read as well. Its motion toward the altar was taken as a prophecy, an easy straight advance without resistance signalling easy success. The sacrificial fire was also read: a clear flame that rose without dividing and consumed the victim signalled acceptance, while a divided or sputtering flame was a bad omen.2
A flawless set of entrails was taken to mean that the gods were favourable.2
What the tradition holds
How practitioners describe it, in their terms. Described, not endorsed.
Dunlop describes the Etruscan prognostics as drawn from the flight of birds, the entrails of animals and observations on thunder, and notes that Etruscan divination rested on experience and observation rather than on immediate inspiration, as the Greeks believed. Peculiar families were the keepers of the sacred ceremonies, and the Etruscan books known to Roman writers included the Libri Haruspicinae and the Fulgurales et Rituales Libri.1
Haruspicy was practised by the ancient Etruscans, whose principles were gathered in books called the Libri Tagetici, and the Roman Senate is said to have consulted haruspices before all important decisions.4
Dunlop also states that consulting the gods before enterprises and the belief that prodigies showed the will of heaven were common to the Tuscan and Roman creeds. Dunlop attributes to Maffei the view that the Etruscans came from Canaan, and the same diviners' profession identified them with the original inhabitants of Canaan.1
What the evidence shows
What historians, scientists and controlled tests have found.
Scipio and Augustus, among others, are said to have despised the sacred chickens and other arts of divination without fatal consequences. By contrast, after Claudius Pulcher ordered the sacred chickens thrown into the sea when they refused to eat, the defeat that followed was construed as divine punishment.2
Roman divination was divided into public forms, considered legitimate, and secret forms, which were generally forbidden. The Twelve Tables, according to Krasinski, declared secret divinations punishable with death.3
Worked out from the evidence
Not stated outright by any one source. It is worked out from the sources cited.
- Augury and haruspicy were distinct Roman techniques: augury read the behaviour of birds and other omens, while haruspicy read the organs and movements of sacrificed animals, and sources treat the two as separate colleges of interpretation.52
- Accounts of the origin of haruspicy disagree. Dunlop links Etruscan divination to a people from Canaan, whereas Cicero's account places its origin in a legend of a child born from a clod of earth, so the accounts of the practice's origin differ.12
Not yet confirmed
- How far did the Etruscan haruspicy tradition shape the separate Roman college of augurs?
- Did the public and private forms of Roman divination change in the centuries after Constantine's laws?
Sources
Museums, universities, archives and primary texts first. Every fact is paraphrased and nothing is copied; Wikipedia is never cited.
- gutenberg.org: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/35750/35750-tei/35750-tei.tei. Read on · Primary text
- gutenberg.org: The Project Gutenberg eBook of Thaumaturgia; Or, Elucidations of the Marvellous, by Oxonian. Read on · Primary text
- gutenberg.org: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32136/32136-tei/32136-tei.tei. Read on · Primary text
- prezi.com: Augury and Haruspicy by Jordyn J on Prezi. Read on · Reference
- gutenberg.org: The Project Gutenberg eBook of Der Occultismus des Altertums, by Karl Kiesewetter. Read on · Primary text
- gutenberg.org: Döderlein's Hand-book of Latin Synonymes. Read on · Primary text