The dissemination of divination in roman republican times

very widespread 196 and along with it the idea that it was the gods who communicated with the
Romans through signs.
Using frequencies of omen words as a measure of how widespread the cultural model for
omens was raises some possible objections. First, it might be that, what we are comparing to,
was more widespread, but not talked about as much, that is, people might have engaged in it
without speaking much about it. While this may be true, the simplest assumption is that, all else
being equal allowing for great individual differences in the sources, the Romans wrote about
things they were interested in and not things they found to be of irrelevant. Given the size of the
sample here surveyed these individual differences should be leveled out.
Second, it could be that omens were particularly apt for writing, but not speaking. This
assumes a modern understanding of writing not consistent with the ancient Roman. Roman
writing was read aloud. It might then be that omens were apt for certain genres. That is indeed
the case, but this, can be answered as the previous objection: we must assume that the contents of
the genres of the Romans with great individual differences reflected their interests. A popular
genre must have been popular because it reflected topics of interest. The size of the sample
should even out the individual differences. We find genres employing many omen stories, but we
also find genres that hardly employ them at all.
Third, it could also be argued that the sources only reflect the elite’s view on the world. That is
obviously true since we have no philosophical treatises from the poor slave in the silver mines of
Spain. There does not, however, seem to have been any significant differences in view on
omens between the elite and the lower social classes. This can be seen from Plautus’ comedies,
which were not meant for the elite, but for the masses. They frequently employed omens as part
196 It indicates that the cultural model implied by omen words was often communicated. We can try to
estimate it a bit more precisely. Normal audio books in English have about 150-175 words per minute.
While there probably is a difference in word length between Latin and English, it is not likely to be
great since they are both more or less of the same type in this respect (not agglutinating, which would
have made a difference). If we take the low estimate that the Romans spoke 150 words per minute, an
average of 95 minutes of conversation would pass between the encounter of the word omen if the
frequencies in the corpus used here are sufficiently representative. Add to this the other ways of
signifying omen. Given this very loose and hypothetical calculation a very low estimate would have it
that the average Roman spoke or heard about omens once every one or two hours. It may ofcourse also
be that the sources transmitted to us are completely unrepresentative of what the Romans talked about.
We simply don’t know. I have not been able to come up with any reason that this should be the case.
199