Boekhandel Douwes Den Haag

Oxford Classical Monographs

Roman Republican Augury

Freedom and Control

Driediger-Murphy, Lindsay G. (Assistant Professor in Latin and Roman Social/Religious History, Assistant Professor in Latin and Roman Social/Religious History, Department of Classics and Religion, University of Calgary, Canada)

Roman Republican Augury

Oxford Classical Monographs

Roman Republican Augury

Freedom and Control

Oxford Classical Monographs: Roman Republican Augury

 

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.


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Beschrijving Oxford Classical Monographs: Roman Republican Augury

Roman Republican Augury: Freedom and Control proposes a new way of understanding augury, a form of Roman state divination designed to consult the god Jupiter.

Previous scholarly studies of augury have tended to focus either upon its legal-constitutional effects or upon its role in maintaining and perpetuating Roman social and political structures. This volume makes a new contribution to the study of Roman religion, politics, and cultural history by focusing instead upon what augury can tell us about how Romans understood their relationship with their gods.

Augury is often thought to have told Romans what they wanted to hear. This volume argues that augury left space for perceived expressions of divine will which contradicted human wishes, and that its rules and precepts did not permit human beings to create or ignore signs at will. This analysis allows the Jupiter whom Romans approached in augury to emerge as not simply a source of power to be channelled to human ends, but a person with his own interests and desires, which did not always overlap with those of his human enquirers. When human will and divine will clashed, it was the will of Jupiter which was supposed to prevail. In theory as in practice, it was the Romans, not their supreme god, who were bound by the auguries and auspices.


ISBN
9780198834434
Pagina's
296
Verschenen
Serie
Oxford Classical Monographs
NUR
680
Druk
1
Uitvoering
Hardback
Taal
Engels
Uitgever
OUP Oxford

Geschiedenis