Chapter 6 - Inventing the sortilegus: lot divination and cultural identity in Italy, Rome, and the provinces

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Divination by lot was widespread in the ancient Mediterranean world. In archaic Italy it was mainly practiced at fixed holy places, as attested by inscribed sortes, by depictions of ritual, and by literary evidence, especially for the oracle of Fortuna Primigenia at Praeneste. By the first century bce, however, it was also being practiced by independent lot diviners in Rome and other cities, where there was a large market for their services, as for other religious specialties. In the first and second centuries ce both institutional and independent diviners were termed sortilegi, but this word does not appear before the mid-40s bce, when it turns up at almost the same moment in Cicero's De Divinatione and Varro's De Lingua Latina. Thus introduced into literary Latin, it quickly eclipsed competing terms, such as sortiarius, found on a late Republican inscription from the shrine of Hercules Victor at Tibur (CILi².1484), and sorex, found in combination with the title haruspex on two Republican inscriptions from Falerii Novi (CILi².1988 (=ILLRP 582) and 1989).

This chapter argues that the invention and spread of the title sortilegus and the prominence of the professional diviner it represented is connected with two important trends in the practice of lot divination in Italy and the Roman empire.