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VERBAL AND VISUAL LITERACIES OF ANCIENT ROME
Dan-el Padilla Peralta, "The bird is the word: the visual dynamics of auspice-taking in Republican Rome and Umbria"
Friday June 08, 2012 | 03:00 -04:00 PM | Building 110

The study of auspices and augury has been relegated to a dusty niche in contemporary work on Greek and Roman religion. My very informal presentation will seek to spice things up by tackling and offering some provisional answers to two seemingly trivial questions--both at the center of debates in the navel-gazing literature. The first: in what direction(s) did the augur face when soliciting a bird sign? The second: why do the Umbrian Iguvine Tables, one of our most important sources for augural procedure, specify the jay, the crow, the woodpecker and the magpie as the birds to be sought by the auspice-taker? My narrow argument will be that the answer to (1) has (something) to do with the answer to (2); my more ambitious claim will be that paying closer attention to augury and auspice-taking can generate some new and striking insights into the visual dynamics of religious ritual in middle and late Republican Italy.