Ancient Rome was an incredibly superstitious place, where omens and other signs of heavenly favor were usually consulted before any great occasion, task, or endeavor. Such divination and auspices-reading was a specialty of a priestly order known as the augures in Rome. Augury is mainly associated with interpreting divine favor or displeasure from the patterns of birds, but augures were also known to consult other types of omens during their surveying of supernatural signs. Augur diviners reportedly dated back to Rome’s earliest history—they were said to have existed in the Roman Kingdom period, and the Romans may have adopted the practice from their Etruscan neighbors. Whatever the case, the augures in Rome became an advisory body that instructed the Roman Senate and magistrates on matters of omens and rituals. Becoming an augur was a lifetime appointment, and by the time of Julius Caesar (100-44 BCE), the college of augures was sixteen members in number. Most interestingly, the augures had the power to suspend public business in Rome at times when the auspices were not ideal. This impressive power, however, would later lead to a great tarnishing of their reputation.
By the final centuries of the Roman Republic, the masses in Rome began to hold the opinion that the augures too often abused their pause powers for irreligious and self-interested reasons. Critics of the group suspected that they were shutting down public business at times when the pause benefited an augur. This poor reputation was so bad that it became a stereotype and fodder for jokes. Many ancient Romans imagined that the augures, themselves, grinned and laughed at their own unseriousness and their religious gamesmanship whenever they congregated or met in chance encounters. On this reputation, the Roman statesman, Cicero (106-43 BCE), wrote, “It seems remarkable that one augur can look another in the eye without grinning” (The Nature of the Gods, 1.71), and Cicero also attributed the same notion to Cato the Elder (c. 234-149 BCE), writing, “But indeed, that was quite a clever remark which Cato made many years ago: ‘I wonder,’ said he, ‘that a soothsayer doesn’t laugh when he sees another soothsayer’” (On Divination, 2.51). Interestingly, the augures were well aware of these stereotypes and reputational problems—Cicero, who wrote down the aforementioned quotes for posterity, was, himself, a member of the college of augures.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
Picture Attribution: (Two Augurs by Jean-Léon Gérôme, reproduced by Goupil & Cie (19th century), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons and the Getty Museum).
Sources:
- Cicero, The Nature of the Gods, translated by P. G. Walsh. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, 1998, 2008.
- The Oxford Dictionary of Classical Myth and Religion, edited by Simon Price and Emily Kearns. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
- https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2007.01.0043%3Abook%3D2%3Asection%3D51
- https://www.britannica.com/topic/augur
