Blood spattered and ran down the silver's non-stick coating, following intricate spidery trails she interpreted, in the back of her mind, using a dozen augural disciplines from six continents.
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Augural practices are presented in the tablets, most notably in the last two ones. They include the praeire verba, i.e. the uttering of the words to be repeated by the arfertur, the legum dictio, the rules for the taking of the auspices such as silence (silentium) and the avoidance of other incidents, the definition of the boundaries of the augural templum, the nuntiatio, announcement of the appearance of the expected signs from birds, the circumambulation of the army with fire. Tablet VI begins with an augural song.
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In both religious and legal usage, verba concepta ("preconceived words") were verbal formulas that could be adapted for particular circumstances. Compare verba certa, "fixed words." Collections of verba concepta would have been part of the augural archives. Varro preserves an example, albeit textually vexed, of a formula for founding a templum.Jerzy Linderski, "The Augural Law", Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.16 (1986), pp. 2246, 2267ff.
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113–114; Jerzy Linderski, "The Augural Law", Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.16 (1986), pp. 2164–2288, especially p. 2174 on the military auguraculum.
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The augural books (libri augurales) represented the collective, core knowledge of the augural college. Some scholarsF. Sini Documenti sacerdotali di Roma antica Sassari, 1983; S. Tondo Leges regiae e paricidas Firenze, 1973; E. Peruzzi Origini di Roma II consider them distinct from the commentarii augurum (commentaries of the augurs) which recorded the collegial acts of the augurs, including the decreta and responsa.Francesco Sini, Documenti sacerdotali di Roma antica.
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A site that had been inaugurated (locus inauguratus), that is, marked out through augural procedure, could not have its purpose changed without a ceremony of reversal.Daniel J. Gargola, Lands, Laws, and Gods: Magistrates and Ceremony in the Regulation of Public Lands (University of North Carolina Press, 1995), p. 27; Jerzy Linderski, "The Augural Law", Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.16 (1986), p. 2273. Removing a god from the premises required the correct ceremonial invocations.
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Verba certa (also found nearly as often with the word order certa verba) are the "exact words" of a legal or religious formula, that is, the words as "set once and for ever, immutable and unchangeable." Compare certae precationes, fixed prayers of invocation, and verba concepta, which in both Roman civil law and augural law described a verbal formula that could be "conceived" flexibly to suit the circumstances.Jerzy Linderski, "The Augural Law", Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.16 (1986), pp. 2266–2267 online, and 2292–2293.
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3; Linderski, "The Augural Law," pp. 2187–2188. The emperor Claudius, who was the grandson of Antony, rehabilitated the day.Suetonius, Divus Claudius 11.3, with commentary by Donna W. Hurley, Suetonius: Divus Claudius (Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 106.
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An adjective of augural terminology meaning favourable. From pro- before and petere seek, but originally fly. It implies a kind of favourable pattern in the flight of birds, i.e. flying before the person who is taking the auspices.
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873–874 online. The theory of ostenta, portenta and monstra constituted one of the three branches of interpretation within the disciplina Etrusca, the other two being the more specific fulgura (thunder and lightning) and exta (entrails). Ostenta and portenta are not the signs that augurs are trained to solicit and interpret, but rather "new signs", the meaning of which had to be figured out through ratio (the application of analytical principles) and coniectura (more speculative reasoning, in contrast to augural observatio).Jerzy Linderski, "The Augural Law", Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.16 (1986), pp.
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The chief responsibility of an augur was to observe signs (observatio) and to report the results (nuntiatio).Jerzy Linderski, "The Augural Law," Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.16 (1986), pp. 2159–2160, 2168, et passim. The announcement was made before an assembly.
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The sacrifice is conducted with the urfeta in one hand at the offering and the crencatro (augural implement comparable to the lituum but crossed (Newman), or toga wore slanted across the right shoulder (Buck)) in the right hand at the time of the slaughtering.
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Daniel J. Gargola, Lands, Laws and Gods: Magistrates and Ceremony in the Regulation of Public Lands (University of North Carolina Press, 1995), p. 27. The boundaries had permanent markers (cippi or termini), and when these were damaged or removed, their effatio had to be renewed.Linderski, "Augural Law," p. 2274.
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The finis (limit, border, boundary), plural fines, was an essential concept in augural practice, which was concerned with the definition of the templum. Establishing fines was an important part of a magistrate's duties.Livy I.18.9; Varro, De lingua latina V.143, VI.153, VII.8-9; Aulus Gellius XIII.
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Rome itself was a kind of templum, with the pomerium as sacred boundary and the arx (citadel), and Quirinal and Palatine hills as reference points whenever a specially dedicated templum was created within. Augurs had authority to establish multiple templa beyond the pomerium, using the same augural principles.
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The Commentaries of the Augurs were written collections probably of the decreta and responsa of the college of augurs. Some scholarship, however, maintains that the commentarii were precisely not the decreta and responsa.Jerzy Linderski, "The Augural Law", Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.16 (1986), p. 2245, note 387.
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A portentum is a kind of sign interpreted by a haruspex, not an augur, and by means of coniectura rather than observatio. Portentum is a close but not always exact synonym of ostentum, prodigium, and monstrum.Jerzy Linderski, "The Augural Law", Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.16 (1986), pp. 2232, 2247.
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Linderski, "The Augural Law", pp. 2252–2256. In legal and rhetorical usage, precatio was a plea or request.Steven M. Cerutti, Cicero's Accretive Style: Rhetorical Strategies in the Exordia of the Judicial Speeches (University Press of America, 1996), passim; Jill Harries, Law and Empire in Late Antiquity (Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 36.
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In religious usage, ager (territory, country, land, region) was terrestrial space defined for the purposes of augury in relation to auspicia. There were five kinds of ager: Romanus, Gabinus, peregrinus, hosticus and incertus. The ager Romanus originally included the urban space outside the pomerium and the surrounding countryside.J. Linderski Augural law in ANRW pp.
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Observatio might also be applicable to many oblative or unexpected signs. Observatio was considered a kind of scientia, or "scientific" knowledge, in contrast to coniectura, a more speculative "art" or "method" (ars) as required by novel signs.Jerzy Linderski, "The Augural Law", Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.16 (1986), pp. 2232–2234, 2237–2241.
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Mohammed Chafik, Revue Tifinagh... Early depictions of rams (related possibly to an early form of the cult of this deity) across North Africa have been dated to between 9600 BC and 7500 BC. The most famous temple of Ammon in Ancient Libya was the augural temple at Siwa in Egypt, an oasis still inhabited by Berbers.
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The phrase diem vitiare ("to vitiate a day") in augural practice meant that the normal activities of public business were prohibited on a given day, presumably by obnuntiatio, because of observed signs that indicated defect (morbus; see vitium).Cicero, Ad Atticum 4.9.1; Festus 268 in the edition of Lindsay; Jerzy Linderski, "The Augural Law", Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.16 (1986), pp. 2187–2188. Unlike a dies religiosus or a dies ater ("black day," typically the anniversary of a calamity), a particular date did not become permanently vitiosus, with one exception. Some Roman calendars (fasti) produced under Augustus and up to the time of ClaudiusJörg Rüpke, The Roman Calendar from Numa to Constantine: Time, History, and the Fasti, translated by David M.B. Richardson (Blackwell, 2011, originally published 1995 in German), pp. 151–152.
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Jerzy Linderski, "The Augural Law", Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.16 (1986), pp. 2156–2157. A site liberatus et effatus was thus "exorcized and available."Robert Schilling, "Augurs and Augury," Roman and European Mythologies (University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 115. The result was a locus inauguratus ("inaugurated site"), the most common form of which was the templum.
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Signs that occurred without deliberately being sought through formal augural procedure were auspicia oblativa. These unsolicited signs were regarded as sent by a deity or deities to express either approval or disapproval for a particular undertaking. The prodigy (prodigium) was one form of unfavourable oblativa.Veit Rosenberger, "Republican nobiles: Controlling the res publica", in A Companion to Roman Religion (Blackwell, 2007), p. 293.
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A lituus (reverse, right, over the patera) as cult instrument, in this coin celebrating the pietas of the Roman Emperor Herennius Etruscus. 300px The word lituus originally meant a curved augural staff, or a curved war-trumpet in the ancient Latin language. This Latin word continued in use through the 18th century as an alternative to the vernacular names of various musical instruments.
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See drawings of Roman door hinges in Harper's Dictionary of Classical Literature and Antiquities, vol. 1, p. 279 In addition to the meaning of "door hinge," the cardo was also a fundamental concept in Roman surveying and city planning. The cardo was the main north- south street of a town, the surveying of which was attended by augural procedures that aligned terrestrial and celestial space.
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Magistracies included senior military and civil ranks, which were therefore religious offices in their own right, and magistrates were 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).Brent (1999), pp. 17, 20: Brent describes augury as the "spiritual equivalent of consulting the polls".
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Consecratio was the ritual act that resulted in the creation of an aedes, a shrine that housed a cult image, or an ara, an altar. Jerzy Linderski insists that the consecratio should be distinguished from the inauguratio, that is, the ritual by which the augurs established a sacred place (locus) or templum (sacred precinct).Jerzy Linderski, "The Augural Law", Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.16 (1986), p. 2249 online.
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William Warde Fowler, The Religious Experience of the Roman People (London, 1922), p. 209. A magistrate who was serving as a military commander also took daily auspices, and thus a part of camp-building while on campaign was the creation of a tabernaculum augurale. This augural tent was the center of religious and legal proceedings within the camp.John Scheid, An Introduction to Roman Religion (Indiana University Press, 2003), pp.
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Robert Maxwell Ogilvie suggests that the cancellation of the elections came from "diehard patricians", who had opposed the creation of the consular tribuneship. As they controlled the augural college, they found a spurious reason to invalidate the election and secure a return to a pair of consuls they supported. The six-time consul Titus Quinctius Capitolinus Barbatus was a member of this group.Ogilvie, Commentary on Livy, p. 542.
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Holding the perca arsmatia (ritual staff) and the cringatro the arsfertur lights the fire then with the two assistants (prinovatus), who hold rods of pomegranate wood, marches with the victims along the Augural Way to the district of Acedonia. Proclamation is made expelling the alien enemies. The Iguvines are ordered to form in companies. The arsfertur and the assistants march about them thrice with the victims and the fire.
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Jerzy Linderski, "The Augural Law", Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.16 (1986), 2231–2233, 2238. The origin of the Latin word coniectura suggests the process of making connections, from the verb conicio, participle coniectum (con-, "with, together", and iacio, "throw, put"). Coniectura was also a rhetorical term applied to forms of argumentation, including court cases.Greek stochasmos (στοχασμός); Tobias Reinhardt, "Rhetoric in the Fourth Academy", Classical Quarterly 50 (2000), p. 534.
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The solicitation of formal auspices required the marking out of ritual space (auguraculum) from within which the augurs observed the templum, including the construction of an augural tent or hut (tabernaculum). There were three such sites in Rome: on the citadel (arx), on the Quirinal Hill, and on the Palatine Hill. Festus said that originally the auguraculum was in fact the arx. It faced east, situating the north on the augur's left or lucky side.
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The liberatio (from the verb liberare, "to free") was the "liberating" of a place (locus) from "all unwanted or hostile spirits and of all human influences," as part of the ceremony inaugurating the templum (sacred space). It was preceded by the consulting of signs and followed by the effatio, the creation of boundaries (fines).Jerzy Linderski, "The Augural Law", Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.16 (1986), pp. 2156–2157, 2248.
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The word religio originally meant an obligation to the gods, something expected by them from human beings or a matter of particular care or concern as related to the gods.Jerzy Linderski, "The Augural Law", Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.16 (1986), p. 2180, and in the same volume, G.J. Szemler, "Priesthoods and Priestly Careers in Ancient Rome," p. 2322. In this sense, religio might be translated better as "religious scruple" than with the English word "religion".
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In Rome's founding myth, the divinely fathered twins Romulus and Remus hold a contest of augury, whose outcome determines the right to found, name and lead a new city, and to determine its site. In most versions of the story, Remus sets up his augural tent on the Aventine; Romulus sets his up on the Palatine.For discussion of Remus in Roman founder-myth, see T.P. Wiseman, Remus: a Roman myth, Cambridge University Press, 1995, p.7 ff.
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The winter solstice was thought to occur on December 25. On 1 January was new year day: the day was consecrated to Janus since it was the first of the new year and of the month (kalends) of Janus: the feria had an augural character as Romans believed the beginning of anything was an omen for the whole. Thus on that day it was customary to exchange cheerful words of good wishes.Ovid Fasti I 178–182.
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Publius received an additional boost to his career when he was co-opted into the college of augurs, replacing the late Lucius Licinius Lucullus, a staunch conservative in politics. Although the augurs held no direct political power, their right to withhold religious ratification could amount to a veto. It was a prestigious appointment that indicates great expectations for Publius's future. The vacancy left in the augural college by Publius's death two years later was filled by Cicero.
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Augustus used the temple to dedicate offerings of the spoils of war. It contained a colossal statue of Julius Caesar, veiled as Pontifex Maximus, with a star on his head and bearing the lituus augural staff in his right hand. When the doors of the temple were left open, it was possible to see the statue from the Roman Forum's main square. In the cella of the temple there was a famous painting by Apelles of Venus Anadyomene.
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A sacred symbol of Bathala, depicting him in the middle with an anito guardian underneath him and a tigmamanukan omen bird behind him. The non-traditional image is influenced by modernity as the tigmamanukan is wrongfully portrayed as a sarimanok from Mindanao. Fairy bluebirds are believed to be the tigmamanukan omen birds of the Tagalog supreme god, Bathala. In Philippine mythology, the Tigmamanukan was believed by the Tagalog people to be an omen or augural bird.
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Toronto led the competition with thirteen of a possible fifteen points after five of their six games. In Toronto's last game at home against Montreal Impact, they only need a draw to win the first Voyageurs Cup. Montreal, however, jumped out to an early 0–2 lead after seven minutes and held on for the win. Montreal Impact won their last three games of the competition, including 1–2 over Toronto, to overcome Toronto's lead and win the augural competition.
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In the interpretive etymology of ancient writers,Servius, note to Aeneid 4.453; Festus 69 (edition of Lindsay). dirae was thought to derive from dei irae, the grudges or anger of a god, that is, divine wrath. Dirae is an epithet for the Furies, and can also mean curses or imprecations,David Wardle, Cicero on Divination, Book 1 (Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 178, 182; Jerzy Linderski, "The Augural Law", Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.16 (1986), p. 2203.
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The augur's interpretation of all these signs informed the magistrate's course of action. The magistrate could repeat the sacrifice until favourable signs were seen, abandon the project or seek further consultation with colleagues of his augural college. Magistrates could use their right of augury (ius augurum) to adjourn and overturn the process of law, but were obliged to base their decision on the augur's observations and advice. For Cicero, this made the augur the most powerful authority in the Late Republic.
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447 n. 8. The fears of the Roman authorities should be explained in connection to the nature of the doctrines contained in the books, which are supposed to have contained a type of physikòs lógos, a partly moral and partly cosmological interpretation of religious beliefs that has been proven by Delatte to be proper of the ancient pythagorism. Part of it must have been in contradiction with the beliefs of fulgural and augural art and of the procuratio of the prodigies.Delatte p.
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A man in a toga holds a simpulum in his hand on a coin of Antonio Drusi. Coin of Pontius Pilate depicting a simpulum and ears of barley The simpulum is commonly shown with the lituus and other sacrificial and augural instruments, on coins of Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, Augustus, Caligula, Vespasian, Nerva, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, Caracalla, Publius Septimius Geta, Volusianus, Saloninus, Valerianus Minor, Domitius Calvinus and Pontius Pilate, as well as on many consular and colonial medals.
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Romulus was said to have pitched his augural tent atop the Palatine. Beneath its southern slopes ran the sacred way, next to the former palace of the kings (Regia), the House of the Vestals and Temple of Vesta. Close by were the Lupercal shrine and the cave where Romulus and Remus were said to have been suckled by the she-wolf. On the flat area between the Aventine and Palatine was the Circus Maximus, which hosted chariot races and religious games.
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Omens observed within or from a divine augural templum – especially the flight of birds – were sent by the gods in response to official queries. A magistrate with ius augurium (the right of augury) could declare the suspension of all official business for the day (obnuntiato) if he deemed the omens unfavourable.Caesar used his ius augurium to declare obnuntiato to Cicero's disadvantage: and vice versa. Conversely, an apparently negative omen could be re-interpreted as positive, or deliberately blocked from sight.
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A mistake made while performing a ritual, or a disruption of augural procedure, including disregarding the auspices, was a vitium ("defect, imperfection, impediment"). Vitia, plural, could taint the outcome of elections, the validity of laws, and the conducting of military operations. The augurs issued an opinion on a given vitium, but these were not necessarily binding. In 215 BC the newly elected plebeian consul M. Claudius Marcellus resigned when the augurs and the senate decided that a thunderclap expressed divine disapproval of his election.
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Dirae precationes were "dire" prayers, that is, imprecations or curses.Pliny, Natural History 28.19, as cited by Nicole Belayche, "Religious Actors in Daily Life", in A Companion to Roman Religion (Blackwell, 2007), p. 287. In augural procedure, precatio is not a prayer proper, but a form of invocation (invocatio) recited at the beginning of a ceremony or after accepting an oblative sign. The precatio maxima was recited for the augurium salutis, the ritual conducted by the augurs to obtain divine permission to pray for Rome's security (salus).
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11, No. 2 (Nov., 1961), pp. 255-259. Skutsch (1961) regards Ennius' variant as the most likely, with Romulus's Palatine augury as a later development, after common usage had extended the Aventine's name - formerly used for only the greater, northeastern height - to include its lesser neighbour. Augural rules and the mythos itself required that each twin take his auspices at a different place; therefore Romulus, who won the contest and founded the city, was repositioned to the more fortunate Palatine, the traditional site of Rome's foundation.
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The Curia Calabra was a religious station or templum used for the ritual observation of the new moon in ancient Rome. Although its exact location is unclear, it was most likely a roofless enclosure in front of an augural hut (auguraculum), on the southwest flank of the Area Capitolina, the precinct of the Temple of Capitoline Jupiter. Servius identifies the Curia Calabra with a Casa Romuli ("Hut of Romulus") on the Capitoline,Servius, note to Aeneid 8.654. but Macrobius implies that it was adjacent to the Casa.
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The statue is life-sized and is of the archaic Apollo type. The expression of the face and the modeling of the body however are realistic. Both hands are missing, so that it is impossible to say what were the attributes of the god, one being perhaps the club of Hercules and/or the ossifrage, the augural bird proper to the god (avis sanqualis), hypotheses made by archaeologist Visconti and reported by Lanciani. Other scholars think he should have hold lightningbolts in his left hand.
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The verb abominari ("to avert an omen", from ab-, "away, off," and ominari, "to pronounce on an omen") was a term of augury for an action that rejects or averts an unfavourable omen indicated by a signum, "sign". The noun is abominatio, from which English "abomination" derives. At the taking of formally solicited auspices (auspicia impetrativa), the observer was required to acknowledge any potentially bad sign occurring within the templum he was observing, regardless of the interpretation.Jerzy Linderski, "The Augural Law", Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.16 (1982), p. 2266, note 472.
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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 were flying in groups or alone, what noises they made as they flew, direction of flight, and what kind of birds they were. 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.
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Divine disapproval could arise through unfit sacrifice, errant rites (vitium) or an unacceptable plan of action. If an unfavourable sign was given, the magistrate could repeat the sacrifice until favourable signs were seen, consult with his augural colleagues, or abandon the project. Magistrates could use their right of augury (ius augurum) to adjourn and overturn the process of law, but were obliged to base their decision on the augur's observations and advice. For Cicero, himself an augur, this made the augur the most powerful authority in the Late Republic.
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The Commentarii Senatus, only once mentioned (Tacitus, Annals, xv. 74) are probably identical with the Acta Senatus. There were also Commentarii of the priestly colleges: (a) Pontificum, collections of their decrees and responses for future reference, to be distinguished from their Annales, which were historical records, and from their Acta, minutes of their meetings; (b) Augurum, similar collections of augural decrees and responses; (c) Decemvirorum; (d) Fratrum Arvalium. Like the priests, the magistrates also had similar notes, partly written by themselves, and partly records of which they formed the subject.
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Inside the "Temple of Mercury" or Temple of Echo at Baiae, containing one of the largest domes in the world before the building of the Pantheon, Rome in the 2nd century AD Rome's major public temples were contained within the city's sacred, augural boundary (pomerium), which had supposedly been marked out by Romulus, with Jupiter's approval. The Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus ("Jupiter, Best and Greatest") stood on the Capitoline Hill. Among the settled areas outside the pomerium was the nearby Aventine Hill. It was traditionally associated with Romulus' unfortunate twin, Remus, and in later history with the Latins, and the Roman plebs.
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Public religion took place within a sacred precinct that had been marked out ritually by an augur. The original meaning of the Latin word templum was this sacred space, and only later referred to a building. Rome itself was an intrinsically sacred space; its ancient boundary (pomerium) had been marked by Romulus himself with oxen and plough; what lay within was the earthly home and protectorate of the gods of the state. In Rome, the central references for the establishment of an augural templum appear to have been the Via Sacra (Sacred Way) and the pomerium.
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Some other deities are known just because they are mentioned occasionally in specifying the limits of augural observation (included those of the town). These theonyms are for the most part known in Roman religion. They are Tursa and (possibly) Hulos in IV 17 and 19 respectively, Vestisios (Libasius) apparently god of libations, Hoios (cf. Latin Holus, Helus, Roman grove of Helernus in Ovid's Fasti II 67-68) god of vegetationHe may have a cave if carso Hoii is interpreted as cave of Hoios (Ancellotti & Cerri), but the most likely meaning of carso is ditch (Newman after A.& K.).
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Dog sacrifices were carried out in Rome also for the Robigalia, a spring festival aimed at warding off crop diseases. The augurium canarium ("dog augury"), which involved both augurs and the state priests,Jerzy Linderski, "The Augural Law", Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.16 (1986), p. 2222. was a moveable feast in response to the rising of the Dogstar, Sirius.Elaine Fantham, Ovid: Fasti, Book IV (Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 271. Festivals in August following the supplicia canum deal with themes of agricultural bounty ensured by sun and water, centering on the Volcanalia of Volcanus (Vulcan) August 23.
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Priestly texts that were collections of prayers were sometimes called precationes.Jerzy Linderski, "The Augural Law", Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.16 (1986), p. 2246. Two late examples of the precatio are the Precatio Terrae Matris ("The Prayer of Mother Earth") and the Precatio omnium herbarum ("Prayer of All the Herbs"), which are charms or carmina written metrically,A.A. Barb, "Animula Vagula Blandula ... Notes on Jingles, Nursery-Rhymes and Charms with an Excursus on Noththe's Sisters", Folklore 61 (1950), p. 23; Maarten J. Vermaseren and Carel C. van Essen, The Excavations in the Mithraeum of the Church of Santa Prisca on the Aventine (Brill, 1965), pp. 188–191.
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In ancient Rome the auguria (augural rites) were considered to be in equilibrium with the sacra ("sacred things" or "rites") and were not the only way by which the gods made their will known. The augures publici (public augurs) concerned themselves only with matters related to the state. The role of the augur was that of consulting and interpreting the will of gods about some course of action such as accession of kings to the throne, of magistrates and major sacerdotes to their functions (inauguration) and all public enterprises. It sufficed to say that the augur or magistrate had heard a clap of thunder to suspend the convocation of the comitia.
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91 (ed.Stangl): Appius Claudius who was brother of this same Clodius and was conducting (matters) in Greece at the time. Cicero wrote to Marcus Brutus as follows in his treatise on the history of Roman rhetoric and orators (Brutus 267): > Also of those who fell in that same war there are M. Bibulus, who wrote with > accuracy as well, particularly since he was no orator, and resolutely > conducted many suits; Appius Claudius your father-in-law, my colleague and > friend. By then he was studious enough and both very learned and experienced > as orator, as well as a true expert in augural and all public law, and in > our antiquities.
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These two tablets repeat the content of tablet I while expanding it to include and expound the minutest details of the rituals. VI Side a Lustration of the arx Introductory auspices: as in I the sacrifice is to be preceded by the taking of the auspices. Formulae passed between the augur and the arfertur (legum dictio); warning against noises, interruptions, meddling; boundaries of the augural templum; formulae of announcement of the auspices (conspectio, nuntiatio); prescriptions applying to the ensuing sacrifice concerning the military rod (pirsca arsmatia), the disposition of the pots and the fire. 1\. Sacrifice of three oxen to Iove Grabovios before the Trebulan gate.
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Valerius Maximus, a historian in the early Principate, reckoned that the punishment should not be inflicted on those of Roman blood even when they "deserved" it.Valerius Maximus, 2.7.12. Moreover, a tribune's person was by law sacrosanct."Tribune" at Livius.org; fuller discussion of the tribunate at Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, "Tribunus," Bill Thayer's LacusCurtius edition.. Finally, it is unclear whether the ten tribunes should possess the knowledge of Rome's secret name,“This name and the name of the tutelary deity of Rome had to be handed down from one generation of Roman priests and magistrates to the succeeding one”: Jerzy Linderski, "The Augural Law," Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II 16.3 (1986), p.
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Observatio was the interpretation of signs according to the tradition of the "Etruscan discipline", or as preserved in books such as the libri augurales. A haruspex interpreted fulgura (thunder and lightning) and exta (entrails) by observatio. The word has three closely related meanings in augury: the observing of signs by an augur or other diviner; the process of observing, recording, and establishing the meaning of signs over time; and the codified body of knowledge accumulated by systematic observation, that is, "unbending rules" regarded as objective, or external to an individual's observation on a given occasion. Impetrative signs, or those sought by standard augural procedure, were interpreted according to observatio; the observer had little or no latitude in how they might be interpreted.
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The obverse depicts a group of statues representing the Lares Praestites, which was described by Ovid.Ovid, Fasti, v, 129–145Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage, p. 312. The Lex Ogulnia (300) gave patricians and plebeians more-or-less equal representation in the augural and pontifical colleges;Cornell, The beginnings of Rome, p. 342 other important priesthoods, such as the Quindecimviri ("The Fifteen"), and the epulonesEstablished in 196 to take over the running of a growing number of ludi and festivals from the pontifices were opened to any member of the senatorial class.Lipka, M., Roman Gods: a conceptual approach, Versnel, H., S., Frankfurter, D., Hahn, J., (Editors), Religions in the Graeco-Roman world, Brill, 2009, pp. 171–172 To restrain the accumulation and potential abuse of priestly powers, each gens was permitted one priesthood at any given time, and the religious activities of senators were monitored by the censors.
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Its details and workings are unknown; it may have derived from a radical intervention into traditional augural law of a civil Lex Aelia Fufia, proposed by dominant traditionalists in an attempt to block the passing of popular laws and used from around the 130s BC. Legislation by Clodius as Tribune of the plebs in 58 BC was aimed at ending the practice,Beard, M., Price, S., North, J., Religions of Rome: Volume 1, a History, illustrated, Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp 109-10. or at least curtailing its potential for abuse; obnuntiatio had been exploited the previous year as an obstructionist tactic by Julius Caesar's consular colleague Bibulus. That the Clodian law had not deprived all augurs or magistrates of the privilege is indicated by Mark Antony's use of obnuntatio in early 44 BC to halt the consular election.J.P.V.D. Balsdon, "Roman History, 58–56 B.C.: Three Ciceronian Problems", Journal of Roman Studies 47 (1957) 16–16.
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Appius Claudius Pulcher (97 – 49 BC) was a Roman patrician, politician and general in the first century BC. He was consul of the Roman Republic in 54 BC. He was an expert in Roman law and antiquities, especially the esoteric lore of the augural college of which he was a controversial member. He was head of the senior line of the most powerful family of the patrician Claudii. The Claudii were one of the five leading families (gentes maiores or "Greater Clans") which had dominated Roman social and political life from the earliest years of the republic. He is best known as the recipient of 13 of the extant letters in Cicero's ad Familiares corpus (the whole of book III), which date from winter 53-52 to summer 50 BC. Regrettably they do not include any of Appius' replies to Cicero as extant texts of any sort by members of Rome's ruling aristocracy are quite rare, apart from those of Julius Caesar.
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The tablets record different sets of rites held on different festive occasions: the main and recorded in greatest detail one is the annual lustration of the citadel (ocre, Latin arx) of Iguvium (Tablets I, VI and VII). This rite includes sacrifices to the Grabovian (major) triad and the minor one near the gates of the town, sacrifices to Marte Hodie and Hondos Çerfios at the two sacred groves of Iove and Coredios (interpreted as Quiritius or Curiatius) respectively, the lustral review of the people of Iguvium in arms, i. e. the city militia, the execration and ritual expulsion (exterminatio) of the traditional enemies of Iguvium and final sacrifices to Çerfios Marti(os), the Praestita Çerfia and the two Tursae, Çerfia and Iovia, at various locations without and within the pomerium. Tablets VI and VII relate the ritual actions such as circumambulations, libations, kneelings and dance in minute detail recording all the prayers and the other augural formulae.
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Milano 1977 p. 252. This grouping has been interpreted as a symbolic representation of early Roman society, wherein Jupiter, standing in for the ritual and augural authority of the Flamen Dialis (high priest of Jupiter) and the chief priestly colleges, represents the priestly class, Mars, with his warrior and agricultural functions, represents the power of the king and young nobles to bring prosperity and victory through sympathetic magic with rituals like the October Horse and the Lupercalia, and Quirinus, with his source as the deified form of Rome's founder Romulus and his derivation from co-viri ("men together") representing the combined military and economic strength of the Roman people. According to his trifunctional hypothesis, this division symbolizes the overarching societal classes of "priest" (Jupiter), "warrior" (Mars) and "farmer" or "civilian" (Quirinus). Though both Mars and Quirinus each had militaristic and agricultural aspects, leading later scholars to frequently equate the two despite their clear distinction in ancient Roman writings, Dumézil argued that Mars represented the Roman gentry in their service as soldiers, while Quirinus represented them in their civilian activities.
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