The dissemination of divination in roman republican times

Post-republican writers
Verrius Flacchus
Verrius Flacchus was a freedman. He was widely considered the most learned scholar of his
age and was the tutor of Augustus’ grandsons (Dihle 1994: 1637). His approach was
antiquarian, which can be seen in his most famous work De verborum significatu. This work
built on early republican grammarians and antiquarians (Dihle 1994: 1640). It is
unfortunately lost, but an abridged version by Sextus Pompeius Festus from the 2 nd century
CE exists. This is unfortunately only known in one manuscript which was burnt at one point.
Consequently some pages are severely fragmented. We also posses an abridgement of Festus’
work by Paulus Diaconus plus references to it in Servius (Dihle 1994: 1641-1643). Here I
will use the edition by Lindsay which contains the work by Festus as well as the abridgment
of Paulus Diaconus. Festus is widely regarded as a quarry of information on technicalities of
Republican religion and will therefore play a central role. We also possess fragments from
Verrius Flacchus through other authors like Aulus Gellius (e.g. Gel.4.5.6).
Aulus Gellius (130-180 CE)
Aulus Gellius’ work Noctes Atticae is a rearrangement of material that he gathered on a wide
variety of subjects. The value of this work lies in the fact that it has a lot of antiquarian
material which is no longer extant, primarily from late Republican and Augustan times
(Stevenson 2004). The advantage of this source relative to other sources referring to the
Roman antiquarians is that Gellius uses the references, most often to Varro, as the substance
of his work, not just as illustrations (Stevenson 2004: 122). This makes it a valuable source of
antiquarian information that can give us information about events far back in time.
Valerius Maximus
Valerius Maximus lived in the early first century CE. Apart from this, almost nothing is
known about him. He wrote a collection on memorable deeds and sayings, Facta et dicta
memorabilia, collected from the works that were available to him. We can see that he has
used either directly or by way of a common source, Valerius Antias, Coelius and Cicero
(Bosch 1929: 110). What makes it a good source for our purposes is that religion and ritual
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