The dissemination of divination in roman republican times

Unexpected
event
Figure 6.3. Web of Causation for the dissemination and resilience of
omens
Salient event
To account for the dissemination oblative divination, it is important to have a cultural
model which functions like a constant prime in heightening the population’s sensitivity to the
communicative potential of salient events. The trigger of an omen is a salient event. An event
can become salient in one of three ways: either by the context of the current concern of a
person, by the recognition of an event as one from a pre-existing catalogue of signs, or by the
event being unexpected or attention demanding in itself. The basic motivation and the
interpretation is the same as in impetrative divination. As in impetrative divination the direct
prestige of the interpreter will have an influence on the credibility of the information
interpreted from the omen.
Catalogue of
signs
Motivation
Dissemination of omens
Current
Concerns
Credibility
value
Direct
prestige
Social hierarchy
Distribution of prestige
Cultural
model
These are the stipulated factors for the two different kinds of divination, but we don’t know
yet the relative importance of them. Neither do we know if they have any measurable
consequences for the dissemination of divination practices. This is why we will now turn to
the empirical investigation of divination in the Roman Republic. However, first, it is
necessary to dwell on the analytical procedure. In the preceding chapters, we have identified
a number of different factors that are stipulated to be important for the dissemination of a
divination practice. Now let us look at how they can become empirically tractable to see
whether the model for the dissemination and persistence of divination is accurate.
Frequency of
communication
about omens
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