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An augur holding a lituus, the curved wand often used as a symbol of augury on Roman coins

An augur was a priest and official in the classical Roman world. His main role was the practice of augury: Interpreting the will of the gods by studying the flight of birds – whether they are flying in groups or alone, what noises that they made as they flew, direction of flight and what kind of birds that they are. This was known as "taking the auspices".

The augural ceremony and function of the augur was central to any major undertaking in Roman society – public or private – including matters of war, commerce and religion. Augurs sought the divine will regarding any proposed course of action which might affect Rome's pax, fortuna and salus (Peace, good fortune and well-being).^[1]

For similar practices in other places, see Ornithomancy.

Etymology

Although ancient authors believed that the term "augur" contained the words avis and gero – Latin for "directing the birds"^{[citation needed]} – historical-linguistic evidence pointed instead to the root aug-: "to increase, to prosper".

History and public role

Priesthoods of ancient Rome
Flamen (250–260 CE)
Major colleges
Pontifices · Augures · Septemviri epulonum Quindecimviri sacris faciundis
Other colleges or sodalities
Fetiales · Fratres Arvales · Salii Titii · Luperci · Sodales Augustales
Priests
Pontifex Maximus · Rex Sacrorum Flamen Dialis · Flamen Martialis Flamen Quirinalis Rex Nemorensis · Curio maximus
Priestesses
Virgo Vestalis Maxima Flaminica Dialis Regina sacrorum
Related topics
Religion in ancient Rome Imperial cult Glossary of ancient Roman religion Gallo-Roman religion
v t e

Political, military and civil actions are sanctioned by augury and by haruspices.

Historically, augury was performed by the priests of the college of augurs on the behalf of the senior magistrates. The other magistrates are empowered to conduct augury as it was required for the performance of their official duties. The magistracies included senior military and civil ranks which are therefore religious offices in their own right and the magistrates are directly responsible for the pax, fortuna and salus of Rome and everything that was Roman.

The presiding magistrate at an augural rite held the "right of augury" (Ius augurii).^[2] The right of nuntiatio – announcing the appearance of auspicia oblativa (Unexpected sign) – was reserved for the officiating augur which would require the interruption of the proceedings that are underway.^[3]

Kingdom of Rome

The Roman historian, Livy stressed the importance of the augurs: "Who did not know that this city was founded only after taking the auspices and everything in war and in peace at home and abroad was done only after taking the auspices?"^[4]

In the Regal period, tradition held that there are three augurs at a time. They numbered nine by the third century. Sulla increased their number to fifteen. By the Principate, their numbers swelled even further to an estimated 25 members.^[5]

Roman Republic

During the Republic, the priesthoods are prized as greatly as the consulship, the censorship and the triumph. Membership gave the lifelong right to participate prominently in processions at ludi and in public banquets and the augurs proudly displayed the symbol of his office, the lituus.^[5]

The Roman augurs are part of a college (Latin collegium) of priests who shared the duties and responsibilities of the position. At the foundation of the Republic in 510 BCE, the patricians held sole claim to this office. By 300 BCE, the office was opened to plebeian occupation as well. The senior members of the collegium put forth nominations for any vacancies and the members voted on whom to co-opt.

According to Cicero, the auctoritas of ius augurum included the right to adjourn and overturn the process of law: Consular election could be – and was – rendered invalid by inaugural error. For Cicero, this made the augur the most powerful authority in the Republic. Cicero himself was co-opted into the college only late in his career.^[6]

In the later Republic, augury was supervised by the college of pontifices, a priestly-magistral office whose powers are increasingly woven into the cursus honorum. The office of pontifex maximus eventually became a de facto consular prerogative.^[7]

Roman Empire

The effectiveness of augury could only be judged retrospectively. The divinely ordained condition of peace (Pax deorum) was an outcome of successful augury. Those whose actions led to divine wrath (Ira deorum) could not have possessed a true right of augury (Ius augurum).^[8] Of all of the protagonists in the Civil War, only Octavian could have possessed it because he alone restored the pax deorum to the Roman people. Lucan, writing during the Principate described the recent Civil War as "unnatural" – a mirror to supernatural disturbances in the greater cosmos. His imagery was apt to the traditional principles of augury and it's broader interpretation by the Stoic apologists of the Imperial cult.^[9] In the Stoic cosmology, the pax deorum was the expression of natural order in human affairs.^[10]

When his colleague, Lepidus died, Augustus assumed his office as pontifex maximus, took priestly control over the State oracles (Including the Sibylline books) and used his powers as censor to suppress the circulation of "unapproved" oracles.^[11]

Despite their lack of political influence under the Empire, the augurate as with it's fellow quattuor amplissima collegia continued to confer prestige on it's members.

Augurs, auguria and auspices

In ancient Rome, the auguria (Augural rites) are considered to be in equilibrium with the sacra ("sacred things" or "rites") and are not the only way which the gods made their will known.

The augures publici (Public augurs) concerned themselves only with matters that are related to the state. The role of the augur was that of consulting and interpreting the will of the gods about some course of action such as the accession of the kings to the throne, of the magistrates and the major sacerdotes to their functions (Inauguration) and all public enterprises. It sufficed to say that the augur or magistrate heard a clap of thunder to suspend the convocation of the comitia.^[12]

Since auguria publica and inaugurations of magistrates are strictly connected to political life, this brought about the deterioration and abuses that condemned augury to progressive and inarrestable debasement, stripping it of all religious value.

Ancient tradition

According to Varro,^[13] before his time, the augures distinguished five kinds of territory: Ager Romanus, ager Gabinus, ager peregrinus, ager hosticus and ager incertus. These distinctions clearly pointed to the times of the prehistory of Latium and testified against the archaic quality of the art of augury.^[3]

The jus augurale (Augural law) was rigorously kept secret. Therefore, very little about the technical aspects of the ceremonies and the rituals was recorded. We had only the names of some auguria:

• The augurium salutis took place once a year before the magistrates and the people which the gods are asked whether it was auspicious to ask to for the welfare of the Romans.


• The augurium canarium required the sacrifice of red dogs and took place after the wheat grains formed and before they are shelled.^[14][15][3]
  


• The vernisera auguria – We knew only the name that implied about a ritual related to the harvest.^[16]
  

The terms, augurium and auspicium are used indifferently by the ancient authors.^[17] The modern scholars debated the issue at length, but failed to find a distinctive definition that may hold for all of the known cases. By such considerations, Dumezil^[18] thought that the two terms refer in fact to the two aspects of the same religious act:

• 
  Auspicium would design the technical process of the operation, i.e. aves spicere, looking at the birds.


• 
  Augurium would be the resulting interpretation i.e. the determination, acknowledgement of the presence of the *auges, the action favored by the god(S), the intention and the final product of the whole operation.

In Varro's words, "Agere augurium, aves specit",^[19] "to conduct the augurium, he observed the birds".

Categories

The auspicia are divided into two categories: Requested by man (Impetrativa) and offered spontaneously by the gods (Oblativa). Both impetrativa and oblativa auspices could be further divided into five subclasses:

• Ex caelo (Thunder and lightning).


• Ex avibus (Birds).


• Ex tripudiis (Attitude to food and feeding manner of Mars' sacred chickens).


• Ex quadrupedibus (Dog, horse, wolf and fox).


• Ex diris (Ominous events).

Only some species of birds (Aves augurales) could yield valid signs^[20] whose meaning would vary according to the species. Among them are the ravens, woodpeckers, owls, ossifragae and eagles.

The signs from the birds are divided into alites from the flight and oscines from the voice: The alites included region of the sky, height and type of flight, behavior of the bird and place where it would come to rest. The oscines included the pitch and direction of the sound.^[21]

Ritual

The magistrates that are endowed by the law with the right of spectio (Observation of auspices) would establish the requested auspicium (Observation platform) before taking the auspicia impetrativa ("requested" or "sought" auspices; see above). The templum or sacred space within which the operation would take place had to be established and delimited (It should be square and have only one entrance)^[22][23] and purified (Effari, liberare).^[24]

The enunciation of the requested auspicia that began the observation portion of the ceremony was called legum dictio.^[25] The observation conditions are rigorous and required absolute silence for the validity of the operation. Technically, the sky was divided into four sections or regions: Dextera, sinistra, antica and postica (Right, left, anterior and posterior).^[26]

The prototype of the ritual of inauguration of people was described in Livy's^[27] description of the inauguration of King Numa Pompilius:

The augur asks Jupiter:^[28] "Si fas est" (i.e. if it is divine justice to do this) "... send me a certain signum (sign)" then the augur listed the auspicia he wanted to see. When they appeared Numa was declared king.

Precedence

Since the observation was complex, conflict among signs was common.^[29] A hierarchy among signs was devised: e.g. a sign from the eagle would prevail on that from the woodpecker and the ossifragae (Parra).^[30]

During the last centuries of the republic, the auspices ex caelo and ex tripudiis supplanted other types as the other forms could be easily used in a fraudulent way, i.e. bent to suit the desire of the asking person.^[31] Cicero condemned the fraudulent use and denounced the decline in the level of knowledge of the doctrine by the augurs of his time,^[32] but in fact the abuse developed from the evasion negative signs, described in the next subsection.^{[citation needed]}

Evasion

The interpretation of signs was vast and complex and the magistrates devised protective tricks to avoid being paralyzed by negative signs.^[33] Against the negative auspicia oblativa, the admitted procedures included:

• Actively avoiding seeing them.


• 
  Repudiare – refuse them through an interpretative sleight of hands.


• 
  Non observare – by assuming that one had not paid attention to them.


• Declaring that something that in fact had not appeared.


• 
  Tempestas – choosing the time of the observation at one's will.


• 
  Renuntiatio – making a distinction between observation and formulation.


• 
  Vitia – resorting to acknowledging the presence of mistakes.


• Repeating the whole procedure.

Attus Navius

Contrary to the other divinatory practices present in Rome (e.g. haruspicina, consultation of the libri Sibyllini) augury appeared to be autochthonous: Originally Latin or Italic. The art had it's roots in the prehistory of the Italic people and was attested in the Iguvine Tables (Avif aseria) and among the other Latin tribes.

The very story or legend of the foundation of Rome was based on augury, i.e. the ascertaining of the will of the gods through observation of the sky and of birds. Romulus and Remus indeed acted as augurs and Romulus was considered a great augur throughout the course of his life.

The character that best represented and portrayed the art however was Attus Navius. His story was related by Cicero:

He was born into a very poor family. One day he lost one of his pigs. He then promised the gods that if he found it, he would offer them the biggest grapes growing in his vineyard. After recovering his pig he stood right at the middle of his grape yard facing South. He divided the sky into four sections and observed birds: when they appeared he walked in that direction and found an extraordinary large grape that he offered to the gods.

His story was immediately famous and he became the augur of the king (see above the episode with king Tarquinius narrated by Livy). Henceforth he was considered the patron of the augurs.^[34]

See also

• 
  Auspex.


• 
  Auspicious.


• 
  The dispute between Romulus and Remus over the founding of Rome (And their attempt to resolve it by augury).


• 
  De Divinatione.


• 
  Haruspex.


• 
  Omen.


• 
  Ornithomancy.

Notes

Sources

• 
  Beard, M.; North, J.; Price, S. (1998). Religions of Rome: A History. Cambridge University Press.
  


• 
  Brent, A. (1999). The imperial cult and the development of church order: Concepts and images of authority in paganism and early Christianity before the Age of Cyprian. Brill. ISBN 90-04-11420-3.
  


• 
  Hornblower, Simon; Spawforth, Anthony (1996). The Oxford Classical Dictionary (3 ed.). Oxford, UK.: Oxford University Press. s.v. augures.


• 
  Rosenstein, Nathan S. (1990). Imperatores Victi: Military defeat and aristocratic competition in the middle and late Republic. Ark.CDlib.org. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
  

External links

• article Augurium in Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities


• 
   Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Augurs". Encyclopædia Britannica. 2 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 903–904.