The crackling of logs on the fire, which Suidas mentions, remains to-day also an incident to be duly noted. Generally it appears to mean that good news is coming or that a friend is arriving, but, if sparks and ashes are thrown out into the room, troubles and anxieties must be expected. The spluttering of a lamp or candle also usually foretells misfortune[884]. Omens as to marriage also may be obtained on the domestic hearth. Two leaves of basil are put together upon a live coal; if they lie as they are placed and burn away quietly, the marriage will be harmonious; if there is a certain amount of crackling, the married life of the two persons represented by the leaves will be disturbed by quarrels; if the leaves crackle fiercely and leap apart, there is an incompatibility of temper which renders the projected alliance undesirable.
These are but a few instances of domestic divination, and a much longer list might easily be compiled. But while I know that many of the peasants do indeed observe such occurrences seriously enough to act upon the supernatural warnings thereby conveyed, yet the religious character of these methods of divination is less demonstrable than that of divination from birds or from sacrifice; and I may content myself with indicating, by a few illustrations only, the continuity of Greek superstition in both this and those other minor branches of divination to which I now pass.
Palmistry, according to Suidas, was an ancient art, and a hand-book of it was composed by one Helenos. The signs of the future were read in the lines of the palm and of the fingers as in modern palmistry. This science is still kept up by some of the old women in Greece, but real proficiency therein is as in other countries chiefly attained by the gypsies (ἀτσίγγανοι), who follow a nomadic life in the mountains and have very little intercourse with the native population.
Divination from involuntary movements of various parts of the body—παλμικόν, as Suidas calls it, on which one Poseidonios was a leading authority—is still very generally practised, and evidently has deviated hardly at all from ancient lines. The twitching of a man’s eye or eyebrow is a sign that he will soon see some acquaintance—an enemy, if it be the left eye that throbs, a friend, if it be the right; and this clearly was the principle which the goat-herd of Theocritus followed when he exclaimed, ‘My eye throbs, my right eye; oh! shall I see Amaryllis herself?’[885] Similarly the buzzing or singing of a man’s ears is an indication that he is being spoken of by others, just as it was in the time of Lucian[886]; and, according to the usual principle, the right ear is affected in this manner by praise and kindly speech, the left by backbiting and slander. Again, if the palm of the right hand itch, it shows that a man will receive money; and reversely, if the left palm itch, he will have to pay money away[887]. So too, if the sole of the right or of the left foot itch, it is a premonition of a journey successful or unsuccessful. Omens of this kind fall with uncomfortable frequency to the lot of those who have to find a night’s lodging in Greek inns or cottages.
To the same category belong hiccoughing and sneezing. The hiccough (λόξυγγας), as also in Macedonia choking over food or drink[888], is a sign that some backbiter is at work, and the method of curing it is to guess his name. Sneezing is a favourable omen, but the particular interpretation of it depends on alternative sets of circumstances. If anyone who is speaking is interrupted by a sneeze, whether his own or that of another person present, whatever he is saying is held to be proved true by the occurrence. ’Γειά σου, cry the listeners, καὶ ἀλήθεια λές (or λέει), ‘Health to you, and you speak (or he speaks) truth.’ If however no one present is in the act of speaking when the sneeze is heard, the first phrase only is used, ‘Health to you,’ or by way of facetious variant, νὰ ψοφήσῃ ἡ πεθερά σου, ‘May your mother-in-law die like a dog[889].’ In either case the prayer for good health can benefit only the sneezer; but in the former, that member of the company who is speaking at the time may obtain corroboration of the statement which he is making from the omen produced by another. This part of the belief is very strongly held; and anyone who is in the unfortunate position of having his word doubted or of being compelled to prevaricate will be better advised to conjure up a sneeze than to expostulate or to swear.
Both these interpretations of sneezing date from ancient times. The old equivalent of ‘Health to you’ was Ζεῦ σῶσον, ‘Preserve him, Zeus’; but such expressions are common to many nations and not distinctively Hellenic. The other interpretation of sneezing, as a confirmation of words which are being uttered, is of more special interest, and has been handed down from the Homeric age. ‘Let but Odysseus come,’ says Penelope, ‘and reach his native land, and soon will he and his son requite the violent deeds of these men.’ ‘Thus she spake,’ continues the passage, ‘and Telemachos sneezed aloud; and round about the house rang fearfully; and Penelope laughed, and quickly then she spake winged words to Eumaeus: “Go now, call the stranger here before me. Dost thou not see how my son did sneeze in sanction of all my words[890]? For this should utter death come upon the suitors one and all, nor should one of them escape death and destruction[891].”’
Among other instruments of divination occasionally used are eggs, molten lead, and sieves. Eggs are chiefly used to decide the prospects of a marriage. ‘Speechless water’[892] is fetched by a boy, and the old woman who presides over such operations pours into it the white of an egg. If this keeps together in a close mass, the marriage will turn out well; but if it assumes a broken or confused shape, troubles loom ahead. In antiquity the science was probably more extended; for a work on egg-divining (ὠοσκοπικά) was attributed to Orpheus. A similar rite may be performed with molten lead instead of white of egg, and it suffices to pour it upon any flat surface[893]. Divination with a sieve—the ancient κοσκινομαντεία—also continues, I have been told, but I know no details of the practice.
Thus then the chief methods of learning the gods’ will as practised in antiquity have been reviewed, and are found to be perpetuated in substantially the same form down to the present day; and not only is the form the same but in many of them the same religious spirit is manifest. The principal difference lies in the paucity of professional diviners now; experts assuredly in some branches there still are, but augury alone would now, I think, be a precarious source of livelihood. Advice from the village priest would in so many cases be cheaper and no less valued than that of the soothsayer.
And as with persons so with places. The pagan temples in which oracles were given have been largely superseded by Christian churches, and possibly the peasants are more inclined to pay for masses which will secure the fulfilment of their wishes than for oracular responses which may run counter to them. Still even so oracles have not yet entirely ceased; and in discussing those which survive we shall find once more a coincidence both in form and spirit between ancient and modern Greek religion.
An oracle, it must be remembered, is simply a place set apart for the practice of divination; the method of obtaining responses has always varied in different places, and the mediation of a professional diviner, though usual, cannot be regarded as essential[894]. Those caves therefore where women make offerings of honey-cakes to the Fates[895] and pray for the fulfilment of their conjugal hopes are really oracles, provided that there is some means of learning there whether the prayer is accepted or rejected. And this is often the case; most commonly the answer is inferred—on what principle of interpretation, I do not know—from the dripping of water or the detachment and fall from the roof of a particle of stone; and in Aetolia I was told of a cave in the neighbourhood of Agrinion in which the nature of the response is determined by the behaviour of the bats which frequent it. If they remain hanging quiescent from the roof and walls, the suppliant’s hopes will be realised; but if they be disturbed by his or, more often, her intrusion and flutter round confusedly, the Fates are inexorably adverse.