The Instruments of Lot Divination
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Chapter 2 The Instruments of Lot Divination William E. Klingshirn On the reverse of a Roman denarius of the year 69 BCE, a child holds a small rectangular object labeled with the word SORS (fig. 2.1).1 If the female figure on the obverse is Fortuna Primigenia (fig. 2.2), as seems likely, the lot depicted would stand for those used at her renowned shrine in Praeneste.2 Scenes of lot divination on Etruscan and Italic sculpture show similar objects being drawn from large urns in a ceremonial setting, and written lots resembling these in Etruscan, Greek, Oscan, and Latin survive in the archaeological record.3 Indeed, a bronze cylinder found at Casalbordino may have been used to dispense lots of just this shape.4 The device is pierced with ten square holes, labeled with the Oscan letters (and numerals) a to k, and decorated with the head of a reclining female, possibly Fortune. Across the Adriatic, in figure 2.1 Denarius of M. Plaetorius Cestianus. Reverse Courtesy of the American Numismatic Society figure 2.2 Denarius of M. Plaetorius Cestianus. Obverse Courtesy of the American Numismatic Society 1 Michael H. Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres, 1974), no. 405/2. 2 Jacqueline Champeaux, Fortuna: recherches sur le culte de la Fortune à Rome et dans le monde romain des origines à la mort de César, vol. 1 (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1982), 65. 3 William E. Klingshirn, “Inventing the sortilegus: Lot Divination and Cultural Identity in Italy, Rome, and the Provinces,” in Religion in Republican Italy, ed. Celia E. Schultz and Paul B. Harvey, Jr., YCS 33 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 137–63, at 140–43. 4 Chieti: Museo Nazionale, inv. 18573, described in Michael H. Crawford, ed., Imagines Italicae: A Corpus of Italic Inscriptions, vol. 2 (London: University of London, 2011), 1272–73. I am grateful to Prof. Crawford for bringing this object to my attention prior to its publication. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004385030_004 The Instruments of Lot Divination 61 northwestern Greece, hundreds of thin lead strips survive from the shrine of Zeus at Dodona.5 Dating from the sixth to the third century BCE, these were inscribed with questions, rolled up, and placed in an urn, ultimately to be drawn out and answered yes or no, probably by a separately drawn lot.6 Such examples could be multiplied.7 Like its ubiquitous modern versions, ancient sortilege depended heavily on instruments, both artificial, like written tablets (or later, books), and natural, such as pebbles, twigs, or beans. Sortilege was not the only form of ancient divination to use instruments, of course. In a telling passage from his treatise on astrology that surveys the astral influ- ences on various types of souls, Ptolemy includes souls “skilled in instruments” (ὀργανικάς) and in “machines” (μηχανικάς) among “those that investigate hid- den things and inquire into unseen things (διερευνητικὰς δὲ τῶν ἀποκρύφων καὶ ζητητικὰς τῶν ἀθεωρήτων), such as souls practicing magic (μαγικάς), those in- volved in the mysteries (μυστηριακάς), those skilled in atmospheric phenom- ena (μετεωρολογικάς) … those that perform wonders (θαυματοποιούς), those expert in the stars (ἀστρολογικάς), philosophical ones (φιλοσόφους), those that observe birds (οἰωνοσκοπικάς) and interpret dreams (ὀνειροκριτικάς), and those like them” (Tetr. 3.14.5, ed Hübner).8 In fact, diviners at both ends of the classical divinatory spectrum used instruments, from astrologers at the ‘technical’ extreme, whose kits in- cluded boards, diagrams, and sacred stones,9 to the Pythia at the ‘natural’ extreme, who used a tripod set over a chasm in Delphi. Visitors to the incu- bation oracle of Amphiarus slept on rams’ skins in preparation for prophet- ic dreams, and at Demeter’s oracle in Patrai, a mirror dipped into a sacred spring revealed the inquirer’s prospects.10 Francesco Roncalli has argued that the primary instrument of haruspicy was the haruspex himself,11 and 5 Now edited by Soterios Dakares et al., Τὰ χρηστήρια ἐλάσματα τῆς Δωδώνης τῶν ἀνασκαφών Δ. Ευαγγελίδη [Ta chresteria elasmata tes Dodones ton anaskaphon D. Euangelide], 2 vols. (Athens, 2013). 6 H. W. Parke, The Oracles of Zeus: Dodona, Olympia, Ammon (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967), 108–11. 7 Further examples in ThesCRA, vol. 5 (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2005), 413–15. 8 Translations are my own unless otherwise indicated. 9 James Evans, “The Astrologer’s Apparatus: A Picture of Professional Practice in Greco- Roman Egypt,” Journal for the History of Astronomy 35.1 (2004): 1–44. 10 Sarah Iles Johnston, Ancient Greek Divination (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008), 94, 98. 11 Francesco Roncalli, “Between Divination and Magic: Role, Gesture, and Instruments of the Etruscan Haruspex,” in Material Aspects of Etruscan Religion, ed. L. Bouke van der Meer (Leuven: Peeters, 2010), 117–26, at 117..