A Classical And Archeological Dictionary Of The Manners Custons Laws Institutions Arts Etc Of The Celebrated Nations Of Antiquity And Of The Middle Ages PDF Download

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1840 edition. Excerpt: ... of turning it round, similar to the key and Bible, or the casting of jdicc to ask the number of wives, children, farms, &c. which answer to the quantity of the chance. Sometimes omens were taken by corn, by taking the letters of the name; as when two were to fight, and by their value to judge the conquest, as they said of Hector's being overcome by Achilles. They sometimes opened a book of Homer, to divine on the first verse they glanced at. They thus foretold the death of Socrates, by meeting with that passage which speaks of the arrival of Achilles, within three days, at Thessaly. Hence the Romans, in public causes, had recourse to the Sibylline oracles, and the private Grecians to Homer's verses. The Romans, particularly in their early annals, were extremely superstitious as regarded omens; and many of their notions on the subject accorded with those of the Greeks. They derived their knowledge of augury chiefly from the Tuscans: and anciently their youth used to be instructed as carefully in this art as afterwards they were in the Greek literature. For this purpose, by a decree of the senate, six of the sons of the leading men at Rome were sent to each of the twelve states of Etruria to be taught. Augurium and Auspicium were commonly used promiscuously; but they were sometimes distinguished. Auspicium was properly the foretelling of future events from the inspection of hirds; Augurium, from any omon or prodigies whatever, (but each of these words is often put for the omen itself); Augurium Salutis, when the augurs were consulted whether it was lawful to ask fafety from the gods. The omens were also called ostenta, portenta, manclra, prodigia. The auspices taken before passing a river were called peremnia, from the beaks of hirds, ...