The dissemination of divination in roman republican times

irths or statues sweating blood, which were reported by citizens to a magistrate. They were
then interpreted by specialized priestly colleges (cf. Rasmussen 2003: 47-52). The questioner
was not manifest, but was implicitly understood as the Roman state, since prodigies warned
of impending disasters. In this case we can see that the sign is an occurrence of something
exceptionally strange in itself. We may also notice that the interpreter is composed of several
persons in a priestly college.
Motivation Sign production Sign interpretation
Practice Questioner Salient event Sign Interpreter
Prodigies in The Roman something
An occurrence Different
the Roman state
attention
priestly
Republic
demanding
colleges
Buryat NN From a
catalogue
An occurrence NN
Table 3.3. Examples of oblative divination
Omens among the Buryat in Mongolia are different. An example is the omen that “if a dog
pricks up its ears like a wolf, it is a bad sign” (Humphrey 1976: 28). This is a relatively
normal occurrence, but it achieves its salience because of its being part of a catalogue of
omens.
The typology is a sequence of components that are critical to perform the function of
divination entailed in the definition: to provide credible knowledge about matters not
otherwise available to human perception or reasoning. While there are other interesting and
worthwhile aspects of divination, I hope to show that these components are crucial in
understanding why divination is a widespread practice. In order to do this we need to find out
how each component works and how the components are related. This will be the purpose of
the following. We will start by considering impetrative divination and then see how oblative
divination differs.
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