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Augury was a Greco-Roman religious practice of observing the behavior of birds, to receive omens. When the individual, known as the augur , read these signs, it was referred to as "taking the auspices".
The effectiveness of augury could only be judged retrospectively; the divinely ordained condition of peace (pax deorum) was an outcome of successful augury. Those whose actions had led to divine wrath ( ira deorum ) could not have possessed a true right of augury ( ius augurum ). [ 9 ]
Ornithomancy (modern term from Greek ornis "bird" and manteia "divination"; in Ancient Greek: οἰωνίζομαι "take omens from the flight and cries of birds") is the practice of reading omens from the actions of birds followed in many ancient cultures including the Greeks, and is equivalent to the augury employed by the ancient Romans.
The word has three closely related meanings in augury: the observing of signs by an augur or other diviner; the process of observing, recording, and establishing the meaning of signs over time; and the codified body of knowledge accumulated by systematic observation, that is, "unbending rules" regarded as objective, or external to an individual ...
augury / ˈ ɔː ɡ jʊər i / → see theriomancy; auramancy / ˈ ɔː r əm æ n s i /: by auras (Greek aurā, ' breath ' + manteía, ' prophecy ') auspicy/auspication → see theriomancy (Latin avis, ' bird ' + specere, ' to look at ') austromancy → see theriomancy / ˈ ɔː s t r oʊ m æ n s i /: by wind (Latin auster, ' south wind ...
A collection of sacred texts called the Etrusca disciplina, written in Etruscan, were essentially guides on different forms of divination, including haruspicy and augury. [8] In addition, a number of archeological artifacts depict Etruscan haruspicy.
The ancient lituus was an Etruscan high-pitched brass instrument, which was straight but bent at the end, in the shape of a letter J, similar to the Gallic carnyx.It was later used by the Romans, especially for processional music and as a signalling horn in the army.
Numen was also used in the imperial cult of ancient Rome, to refer to the guardian-spirit, 'godhead' or divine power of a living emperor—in other words, a means of worshiping a living emperor without literally calling him a god.