NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2°<» S. Vlir. July 2. '59, 



Rom. 9. He mentions tbe attempted deceit of 

 Romulus as one of tbe versions of the story. 

 From this occurrence the Romans, he remarks, 

 make great use of vultures in augury. He ac- 

 counts for this custom partly by the harmless 

 qualities of the bird, which destroys no living ani- 

 mal and no vegetable, and does not even feed on 

 the dead of its own species ; and partly by the 

 rarity of its appearances. The same remark and 

 solution are repeated in Qucest. Bom. 93. Victor 

 de Orig. G. R. 23. has a similar account, but he 

 omits the attempt at deceit, and merely states 

 that the interpretation was disputed. It may be 

 inferred from Ce^sorinus (7). N., 17.) that the 

 identification of the twelve birds seen by Romu- 

 lus with vultures was as early as Varro. 



The vul(ure appears in another omen of the 

 regal period. Dionysius (iv. 63.) relates that 

 the downfal of Tarquinius Superbus was pre- 

 ceded by the following prodigy. Some eagles 

 built their nest at the fop of a tall palm tree, near 

 the king's palace. While the eaglets were still 

 unfledged, a large flight of vultures attacked the 

 nest and destroyed it ; killed the young birds, and 

 assaulted the parent birds on their return to the 

 nest, striking them with their beaks and wings, 

 and drove them from the palm tree. The prodigy 

 is briefly adverted to by Zon. vii. 11. 



The vulture likewise appears during the his- 

 torical age in connexion with auguries in Italy. 

 Dio Cassius states that when Augustus, after 

 the death of Julius (43 b. c), appeared at the 

 Comitia in the Campus Martius, for his election 

 as consul, he saw six vultures, and that he after- 

 wards saw twelve, when he addressed the soldiers. 

 He is said to have compared this augury with 

 that of Romulus, and to have recognised in it an 

 omen of his future greatness (xlvi. 46.). Sueto- 

 nius (^Oct. 95.) and Appian (b. c. iii. 94.), de- 

 scribing the same event, mention only twelve 

 vultures ; Obsequens (c. 68.) speaks of six on 

 each occasion. Dio Cassius relates soon after- 

 wards, among other prodigies, that numerous 

 vultures alighted upon the temples of Genius 

 Publicus and Concord at Rome (xlvii. 2.) He 

 likewise declares that when Vitellius was sacri- 

 ficing and haranguing the soldiers, shortly before 

 his death (69 a.d.), many vultures fell upon the 

 victims, scattered them in various directions, and 

 nearly threw him down from the tribunal (Ixv. 

 16.). Julius Obsequens (c. 42. 49.) mentions 

 vultures among the prodigies of the years 105 

 and 95 b.c. His account is that some vultures 

 were killed by lightning upon a tower * ; and that 

 vultures, devouring a dead dog, were killed and 

 eaten by other vultures. He appears to refer to 

 Italy, though the places are not mentioned. 



* It was the belief of the ancients that the eagle, the 

 bearer of Jove's thunderbolts, was never killed by light- 

 ning. (Plin. X. 4. ; Serv. JEn., i. .394.) 



Plutarch, as we have already seen, states that 

 the Romans made a great use of the vulture in 

 auguries, which seems to imply its frequency in 

 Italy ; though he proceeds to account for the 

 sanctity attached to the bird by the rarity of its 

 appearance (^(nrdviov Olafxa). According to Pliny 

 (x. 7.), Umbricius, the most skilful aruspex of his 

 own time, stated that the vulture laid thirteen 

 eggs ; that with one egg it purified the others and 

 its nest, and afterwards threw it away ; and that 

 it flew lo the place where dead bodies were to be 

 found three days beforehand. Umbricius is men- 

 tioned by Tacitus (^Hist. i. 27.) as an aruspex 

 who warned Gsilba of his death. The reference 

 of Pliny to a celebrated aruspex of his own time, 

 as an authority for facts in the natural history of 

 the vulture, seems to imply that the vulture was 

 then used in augury. The following birds are 

 enumerated by Festus (alites, p. 3. ; oscines, p. 

 197.), and after him by Servius (on JEn., i. 394.), 

 as affording auspicies, not by their voice, but by 

 their flight ; viz. the buteo, the sanqualis, the im- 

 musculus, the eagle, and the vulture. The buteo, 

 according to Pliny, was a species of hawk used in 

 auguries. It gave its name to a family of the 

 Fabian gens ; because a bird of this species settled 

 on. the general's ship, and afforded a lucky omen. 

 The sanqualis and immuseulus were birds in great 

 request by augurs, allied to the eagle and the 

 vulture. Pliny mentions that these birds were 

 reported not to have been seen at Rome since the 

 time of Mucius the Augur ; but he is inclined to 

 attribute the fact of their not having been ob- 

 served to the recent neglect of taking auguries 

 (N. H. X. 8, 9.). Q. Mucius Scsevola, the person 

 here referred to, was pra;tor in 121, and an old 

 man in 88 b.c. Livy makes a similar complaint 

 with respect to the remissness in recording prodi- 

 gies which had grown up in his time (xliii. 15.). 

 The Romans do not seem to have been consistent 

 in their views respecting the auspiciousness of the 

 vulture : for, in the Thebaid of Statins (iii. 496 — 

 509.), the prophet, taking an augury, complains 

 that no propitious bird has come in view, but that 

 the hawk and the vulture have alone been seen. 



Livy, describing a great pestilence at Rome in 

 the year 174 b. c, and a murrain of the cattle in 

 the preceding year, states that many bodies re- 

 mained unburied in the streets, but that they 

 wasted away, and were not devoured by dogs or 

 vultures ; and that notwithstanding the great 

 mortality of cattle and men in these two years, 

 no vulture was ever seen (xli. 21.). 



Plutarch, in his Life of Marius, c. 17., relates 

 a strange story, on the authority of Alexander of 

 Myndus, a Greek writer on zoology ; namely, that 

 two vultures frequently appeared to the army of 

 Marius, before its successes, and were therefore 

 considered a good omen ; they were known by 

 brazen chains, which the soldiers had fastened 

 round their necks. 



