The dissemination of divination in roman republican times

Dionysius Hallicarnassus (60 BCE- 7 BCE)
Dionysius of Hallicarnassus was a Greek historian living in Rome at the end of the 1 st century
BCE. He wrote a history of early Rome, of which only the first books are still extant. He built
on the early Roman annalists and frequently gives us references to contemporary life. His
work is a useful source for early historical data, but is not a good source for technical details.
Titus Livius (59 BCE-17 CE)
Another central source is Livy’s Ab urbe condita, which is a history of Rome from its
foundation until his own time. Unfortunately, not all books are extant. For those books
missing we have a good source for the prodigies in Julius Obsequens’ epitome (cf. Schmidt
1968) and we also have some medieval summaries, periochae, which, unfortunately, are not
very precise or informative. It is generally accepted that Livy did not consult any primary
sources, such as monuments, annals or books himself. Rather, he wrote his history on the
basis of a small number of previous historians and annalists (Walsh 1961). These previous
historians, such as Valerius Antias and Claudius Quadrigarius, were well informed for
example about the contents of the Annales Maximi (Ogilvie 1965: 12-16; Szemler 1972: 17-
19; Walsh 1961: 120-122). The Annales Maximi were the official records of the Roman state.
They are probably the earliest written Roman history and were probably made public in the
end of the 2 nd century BCE (Gross 1933). Through Livy and his intermediaries we therefore
have access to relatively solid historical information from at least the 5 th century and
onwards.
There is, however, one caveat: since it is only the typically annalistic information, and
maybe a few stories, we can trust from the very early times, we should not take everything
Livy writes for historical truth. When for example we encounter a speech of Cincinnatus we
should not think that this is in any way based on historical fact. This caveat applies to all
speeches in Livy, which tend to say more about his own times than the history they portray.
In distinction to reported speeches, the information that someone had been consul and
abdicated because of a ritual fault in the auspices can probably be trusted, since it is this type
of information that would have been recorded in the official annals. When we come down to
where the extant books of Livy start again, in the 3 rd century, the historical narratives are
fuller and more trustworthy since here Livy had access to historians who were contemporary
or close in time to the events related (Cornell 1995: 6).
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