The dissemination of divination in roman republican times

encounter of people using it to a great extent. The basic problem facing scholars was why the
primitives differed from the modern Europeans. The first explanations were formulated in
evolutionist terms, but two distinctive threads seem to run through the research history. The first
thread, the British, explained the difference in terms of a deficiency among the primitive to make
inductive generalizations. This reflects the British empiricist philosophical tradition. In France
the rationalist tradition resulted in a concern for collective representations and classification.
With the work of Evans-Pritchard something new happened. He combined elements of these two
traditions with a new current that emphasized extended fieldwork. This produced the landmark
study Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande. Subsequent research has to a great
extent been an elaboration on these early foundations. Although many important theoretical
explanations have been offered, it was argued that two important points are lacking in previous
research. First, there is no sufficient account of the cognitive basis for divination. Second, there
is no account of the dissemination and historical dynamics of divination.
In chapter 3, the outline of a theoretical model of divination that would make up for the
deficiencies in the previous research, was sketched. As a starting point a stipulative definition of
divination was offered: “Divination is the acquisition of credible knowledge about matters not
otherwise available to normal human perception or reasoning”. From the point of view of
cognitive science, the core function of divination is a representation of a communicative relation
with a counterintuitive agent, who has access to matters not available to normal human
perception or reasoning. There are two basic ways this relation can lead to acquisition of
knowledge by the human communicant. Either the divination is represented as a response or an
unsolicited address to the human communicant from the counterintuitive agent. By looking at the
basic cognitive process behind divination it was possible to provide a theoretic platform that
could integrate ritual divination and omens. This has not been attempted since the breakdown of
evolutionist anthropology. The basic character of divination as a communicative interaction with
a counterintuitive agent forms the basis of the distinction between two types of divination, which
were termed impetrative and oblative divination. This typology escapes the Ciceronian
identification of natural and artificial divination as the basic distinction of divination. Expanding
on this typology, divination in general was argued to be composed of three primary elements that
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