GG8 
AUGURY. 
Lightning in the day-time was attributed to Jupiter, in the night to 
Pluto ; and such bolts only as Jupiter launched singly from him- 
self, were esteemed fortunate in popular belief ; those which were 
emitted during the sitting of a council of the gods, were of ill 
omen, — but no rules are laid down, by which the difference between 
the two is to he determined. Thunder, with reports even in num- 
ber, portended good fortune. Lightning from north to west was a 
forerunner of evil ; so too was it, if accompanied with hail, or if it 
struck men or temples, or if it descended from a clear sky. Here 
again, on this last point, the Greeks thought differently. When Jove 
thundered to Ulysses from the cloudless serene sky, the hero, we are 
told, rejoiced in his heart. (Odyss. 103.) 
The second division of Augury referred especially to the notes and 
the flights of birds. Such birds as gave augury by their chirping, 
were called oscines, (os, a mouth, cano, I sing,) such as the flying prae- 
petes. The crow, the raven, and the owl, were amongst the former; 
the vulture among the latter ; some, as the pye, belonged to both 
classes. Birds were also otherwise divided: 1st, which 
permitted an attempt to be made ; but the oscines on the left, it is said, 
w'ere aUvays favourable, (Alex. Ah. Alex. v. 13.); though we know' not 
how to reconcile this belief to the crow' of Melibeeus, (Virg. Ec. 1.) 
unless by remarking, once for all, that the whole art of augury appears 
to have been a juggle, and a mass of uncertainty and contradic- 
tion. 2nd, Funebres, ill-omened, which were called also arculce, 
arceo, I drive aw'ay ; clivice, clivus, a difficulty ; remorce, remoror, 1 delay ; 
inebree, inhibeo, I stop ; alterce, if they interfered with a former good 
one ; and volsgrce, vello, I pluck, if by plucking their own feathers 
they portend ill. 
An eagle from the right, particularly if it flew with outstretched and 
changing wings, betokened prosperity. Homer in this agreed w'ith 
the Romans. When Priam set forward to entreat Achilles for the 
body of Hector, this w'as the very omen for which, by the advice of 
Hecuba, he besought Jupiter. An eagle on the right, uttering its 
note while sitting, was pronounced by an Ephesian augur to appertain 
to the fortunes of a man who should fill a public office, since it W'as 
a bird of command ; the office was to be attended with danger, since 
other birds attack a sitting eagle ; and it was not to be lucrative, 
since an eagle collected its prey while on tlie wing. The fate of Xeno- 
ph on verified these predictions. (Anal. v. 9.) The eagle which took 
oft* the cap of the elder Tarquin, and placed it again on his head, 
portended to him his future sovereignty ; while the young brood which 
was driven from its food by vultures, and torn in pieces with its eyrie, 
equally foretold, to his proud descendant, his exile and dethronement. 
Before the abdication of the Syracusan Dionysius, it is said that 
an eagle had snatched a javelin from the hands of one of his body 
guards, and after bearing it aloft had dropped into the sea. Claudius 
and Vitellius each drew encouragement from an eagle ; and a victory 
which Doraitian had won over Antony, his rebellious lieutenant of 
Upper Germany, though the field of battle was 2500 miles distant, 
was announced at Rome, on the very day ©f the triumph itself, by 
an eagle w hich alighted on the conqueror’s statue, and uttered cries of 
