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Marvels and Divination in Ancient Italy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Raymond Bloch
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Extract

Among the multiple aspects that are apparent to us in the religious life of the ancients, our attention is quite naturally directed toward the extremely important occurrences which interrupt the normal course of things and reveal the intrusion of the sacred into the life of men. These phenomena, called τέρατα in Greek, prodigia a in Rome, are of diverse, but always significant, value, according to the particular case. They sanction the privileged state of being of people who are marked by the imprint of the divine, they adduce irrefutable confirmation of the will of the gods, they interpret the joy and, far more frequently, the anger of the all-powerful beings who decree the course of the world.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 4 , Issue 16 , December 1956, pp. 39 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © 1956 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

1. L. Wülker, Die geschichtliche Entwicklung des Prodigienwesens bei den Römern, Diss. Leip zig, 1903 and F. Luterbacher, Der Prodigienglaube und Prodigienstil der Römer, Diss. Burgdorf, 1904.

2. Livy, V, I, 16 and Arnobius, Adversus Gentes, VII, 26.

3. A good study has been made by C. O. Thulin, Die etruskische Disciplin, 3 vols. (Goten borg, Zachrissons, 1906-1909), the bibliography for which can be found in A. Grenier, Les Religions étrusque et romaine, "Collection Mana" (Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1948).

4. A. Bouché-Leclerq, Histoire de la Divination dans l'Antiquité, 4 vols. (Paris, Leroux, 1879-82).

5. Two already outmoded dissertations treat the subject: P. Stein, Marburg, 1909 and K. Steinhauser, Der Prodigienglaube und das Prodigienwesen der Griechen, Tübingen, 1911. The correct note is struck by Martin P. Nilsson in his work Geschichte der griechischen Religion: Vol. I, Bis zur Weltherrschaft, Vol. II, Die hellenistische und römische Zeit (Munich, Beck, 1941-50).

6. Stefana Weinstock, "Libri fulgurales," in Papers ofthe British School at Rome, XIX, 1951, pp. 122 ff.

7. A. Piganiol, "Sur le Calendrier brontoscopique de Nigidius Figulus," in Studies in Roman Economic and Social History in Honor of Allan Chester Johnson (Princeton, Princeton Uni versity Press, 1951), p. 79 ff. The point is again evoked by the same author in a study entitled "Les Etrusques, Peuple d'Orient, in Cahiers d'Histoire mondiale, Vol. I, No. 2, Oct., 1953, p. 328 ff.

8. Livy, I, XXXIV, 8.

9. Franklin Brunell Krauss, An interpretation of the omens, portents, and prodigies recorded by Livy, Tacitus and Suetonius (Phila., Pa., Publication of the University of Pennsylvania, 1931).

10. This minute organization of the sacred is analyzed by R. Bloch, "Les Prodiges romains et la Procuratio Prodigiorum," Mélanges De Visscher, Vols. 2 & 3, 1949, Revue Internationale des Droits de l'Antiquité, p. 119 ff.

11. These are the conclusions developed in the following studies: W. Hoffmann, Wandel und Herkunft der Sibyllinischen Bücher, Leipzig, 1933, and R. Bloch, "Origines étrusques des Livres Sibyllins," Mélanges Ernout, 1940, p. 21 ff. The problem is again considered in the recent thesis of J. Gagé, Apollon romain; Essai sur le Culte d'Apollon et le Développement du "Ritus graequs " à Rome des Origines à Auguste, Bibliothèque des Ecoles françaises de Rome et d'Athènes (Paris, de Boccard, 1955).

12. W. Warde Fowler, Religious Experience of the Roman People from the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus (London, Macmillan & Co., 1911); G. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Rö mer, 2d ed. (Munich, Beck, 1912), and Cyril Bailey, Phases in the Religion of Ancient Rome (Berkeley, Calif., University of California Press, 1932).

13. Cf. the annotated edition of the De divinatione, made by Arthur Stanley Pease (Ur bana, University of Illinois Press, 1923), Vol. VIII.

14. This episode is reproduced in the classical work of C. Cichorius, Die Reliefs der Tra iansaule (Berlin, Riemer, 1896-1900), Plate XVIII, 60.

15. A picture of the scene is depicted in the recent book of C. Caprino, A. M. Colini, G. Gatti, M. Pallottino and P. Romanelli, La Colonna di Marco Aurelio (Rome, "L'Erma," 1956), pl. II and 12, fig. 23 and 24. J. Guey devoted several studies to the analysis of this prod igy in the Revue de Philologie, XXII, 1948, p. 16 ff. and in Mélanges d'Archéologie et d'Histoire, LX, 1948, p. 105 ff. and LXI, 1949, p. 93 ff.