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Scholarship on Roman Republican augury has previously tended towards the view that official divination was organized to tell its users what they wanted to hear. This volume argues instead that its rules did not allow humans simply to create or ignore signs at will: when human and divine will clashed it was the latter which was supposed to prevail.
List of contents
- Frontmatter
- Texts and Abbreviations
- 0: Introduction
- 0.1: Of Gods and Men
- 0.2: Why Now?
- 0.3: What Is Needed?
- 0.4: How? Four Guiding Principles
- 1: Do As I Say, Not As I Do? Report versus Reality in Augury
- 1.1: Introduction
- 1.2: Principle 1 in the High and Late Empire: Comments on Signification
- 1.3: Principle 1 in the High and Late Empire: Claims that Augural Rules Gave Humans the Freedom to Accept or Reject Signs
- 1.4: Principle 1 in the Middle (and Late) Republic: Claims that Human Awareness of Signs Determined their Validity
- 1.5: Principle 2 in the Early Principate: The Claim that Augural Rules Gave Humans Freedom to 'Create' Signs by Reporting Them
- 1.6: Principle 2 in the Late Republic: The Claim that Humans Contrived Auspication so as to Receive Favourable Signs and Avoid Receiving Unfavourable Ones
- 1.7: Conclusions
- 2: Convenience or Conversation? Why 'Watching the Sky' was More than Wishful Thinking
- 2.1: Introduction
- 2.2: What Was Sky-Watching?
- 2.3: Did Sky-Watching Invariably Produce Signs?
- 2.4: Was Sky-Watching Technically Sufficient to Prohibit Assemblies?
- 2.5: Possible Objections: The Timing of Servare de Caelo
- 2.6: But Would It Actually Work?
- Appendix: Ancient References to the Bibulus Affair
- 3: Out of Control? The Effects of Augury on Roman Public Life
- 3.1: Introduction
- 3.2: Motives, Part 1: Cicero, the Augurium Salutis, and the Limits of our Knowledge
- 3.3: Motives, Part 2: Two Methodological Problems and Two Abdicating Consuls
- 3.4: Motives, Part 3: The Consul, his Colleague, a Tribune, and Roman Respect for Augury
- 3.5: The Dynamics of State Divination
- 3.6: But Did It Really Matter?
- 3.7: Conclusion: When Signs Said No
- 4: Conclusion
- Endmatter
- Bibliography
- Index Locorum
- General Index
About the author
Lindsay G. Driediger-Murphy is an Assistant Professor in Latin and Roman Social/Religious History at the University of Calgary, Canada. After completing a DPhil in Ancient History at the University of Oxford in 2011 she became a Stipendiary College Lecturer at Oriel and Jesus Colleges, Oxford, before moving back to Canada to take up her current post. Her research and teaching focus on the religious history of the ancient world.
Summary
Scholarship on Roman Republican augury has previously tended towards the view that official divination was organized to tell its users what they wanted to hear. This volume argues instead that its rules did not allow humans simply to create or ignore signs at will: when human and divine will clashed it was the latter which was supposed to prevail.
Additional text
Driediger Murphy has written a clear and powerful treatise. In its careful and systematic treatment of the evidence, it mounts a daunting case for an alternative reading of Roman augury...tis book is a mission statement for a different approach to Roman religion.
