The dissemination of divination in roman republican times

her life”. 85 In the example the technique of being attentive to omens functions like the
Princess Alice prime.
Another example where it is perhaps even clearer how the concern of an agent determines
the context in which an omen is interpreted is from a 19 th century collection of Danish
folklore. The story is from 1886 and is about a boy from Fanø, Western Denmark. His father
had gone on a trip around the earth as a sailor, but it had been a long time since he had
departed. Therefore people started to speculate that he had probably died. A friend of the boy
took him into his house and showed him a jar in which there was water. In the water had been
put the yoke of an egg and at the bottom something lay. The friend said that it signified that
the sailor, the boy’s father, had drowned. So his mother and aunt had told him” (Hansen
1957: 11). The context is here determined by the current concern of the boy and his mother
for the life or death of his father.
This form depends in large part on the previous dissemination of a cultural model that
functions like a cultural prime. Without being sensitive to the possibility of omens it is less
probable that an occurrence will be seen as an omen.
2) The event stems from a catalogue of recognized omens that have a predetermined
meaning. It can be something as vague as a good or bad sign. Consequently it is not always
immediately clear what concern it relates to and the interpretation can change. An example
from the same folklore collection from Denmark shows this: “On the church in Tjørring sat
an owl that howled and Peter Christian thought: “What is that – it must mean something –
should I return?” But he continued. When the next day came he wanted to take a nap and said
to his wife: “Kræsten [his son] can come to me.” The boy, who was two years old and ran in
the kitchen, fell one moment later into a bowl of boiling hot brine, which the wife had put on
the floor and he became terribly burned and died” (Hansen 1957: 9). Apart from signifying
something bad, the precise meaning of the sign was not clear until later. It had been a
prediction of death in Peter Christian’s family. Here the owl is a sign from a catalogue of bad
signs, but the actual significance is only found later.
Some omen catalogues are much more elaborate, and frequently, they are written. A
prototypical example of this is the ancient Babylonian omens. Here the omens are written
down in large catalogues for future reference (Labat 1933). This form is dependent on the
85 From the website: http://www.care2.com/channels/solutions/home/1508 (08.02.07)
107