The most inauspicious omens were given by ravens, but the degree of misfortune which they were supposed to portend depended, in some measure, in their appearing on the right hand or the left; if they came croaking on the right hand it was a tolerably good omen; but if on the left a very bad one.... The crow appearing [at a wedding] denoted long life to the married pair, if it appeared with its mate; but if it was seen single separation and sorrow were portended. Whence it was customary at nuptials for the maids to watch that none of these birds coming singly should disturb the solemnity.
It was hardly to be expected that the comprehension of all this science of soothsaying should belong to ordinary mortals; and therefore there arose early in its development certain clever “wise men” who declared themselves endowed with magical power to understand the language of birds, and to interpret both their chatter and their actions. Thus originated the profession of augury, a word that spells “bird-talk” in its root-meaning, with its later product auspices, or “bird-viewers.” The augur originally was a priest (or a magician, if you prefer that term) who listened to what the birds said; and the auspex was another who watched what they did, or examined their entrails to observe anything abnormal that he might construe as an answer to prayer, or interpreted something else in the nature of an omen from this or that divinity, or from all the gods together.
I need not describe the elaborate rites and ceremonies that came to be associated with the practice of this kind of divination (ornithomancy), especially under the revered and powerful College of Augurs that practically ruled the Roman Republic, even in the Augustan age, for it will suffice to direct attention to a few features.
Birds were distinguished by the Roman augurs as oscines or alites, “talkers” and “flyers.” The oscines were birds that gave signs by their cry as well as by flight, such as ravens, owls and crows. The alites included birds like eagles and vultures, which gave signs by their manner of flying. The quarter of the heavens in which they appeared, and their position relative to that of the observer, were most important factors in determining the significance of the supposed message, as has been extensively explained in an earlier chapter of this book.
This science or business of bird-divination, for it was both, was of prehistoric antiquity. Plutarch[[94]] records that Romulus and Remus, the fabled founders of the Latin race began their eventful life under a wild fig-tree, where a she-wolf nursed them, and a woodpecker constantly fed and watched over them. “These creatures,” Plutarch remarks, “are esteemed holy to the god Mars—the woodpecker the Latins still especially worship and honor. Romulus became skilled in divination, and first carried the lituus, or diviner’s staff, a crooked rod with which soothsayers indicated the quarters of the heavens when observing the flight of birds.”
Among the Romans not a bird
Without a prophecy was heard.
Fortunes of empire often hung
On the magician magpie’s tongue,
And every crow was to the state