The dissemination of divination in roman republican times

vastly different views on what legislation is in fact 'good for Rome'" (Beard, North, & Price
1998: 126-127). Thus the Romans believed in divination, but their interpretations of the signs
from the gods may vary.
Summary
The early research was carried out in an ideographic historical fashion. The theses offered did
not differ significantly from those found in the sources of the Romans themselves. Around
the turn of the 19 th century the study of divination was inspired by the new discipline of
anthropology, which added a general or nomothetic frame for conceptualizing Roman
divination. Eventually the enthusiasm of nomothetical explanations faded and a more
historical approach came to dominate again. In the seventies nomothetic approaches gained
influence again, as old ideas were further developed by the integration of advances in
psychology and philosophy. Sociological theory and new developments in anthropology
added new explanatory frames that were put to use in explaining divination. As can be seen
from the preceding, quite a lot of overlap exists between the different explanations offered,
although all of them have their own peculiarities and focus, they all seem to mix a small
number of explanations. For purposes of critical evaluation, they can be summarized in the
form of four central theses: the historical thesis, the formalist thesis, the fear thesis and the
functional thesis. In the following I will present a critical review of these theses.
Four central theses in the history of Roman Divination
The historical thesis
This thesis stipulates that historical contingencies explain the existence of divination. For
example Warde-Fowler believed that divination owes its existence to a civic adaptation of an
agricultural practice of predicting the weather. Another more prevalent scheme is the
evolutionist. Here divination is explained as a survival from an earlier stage of culture. This
can be seen in Krauss and Bayet. A third prevalent historical explanation is that Roman
divination is somehow influenced by the Greeks or the Etruscans (Bloch and Latte). Often
the introduction of Greek philosophy is the central causal factor of manipulation in late
republican times (Taylor, Latte).
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