Text and practice in Roman divination: five themes for a comparative debate

Federico Santangelo

Abstract:

This paper discusses the role of the textual dimension in Roman divination by focusing on five key questions: how Roman divination is conceptualised and defined in extant written sources; what the main categories of textual evidence are; who the practitioners of divination were, and how they engaged with the textual dimension of their craft; what techniques they resorted to; and what aspects might be distinctive about the interplay between text and practice in Roman divination. Its key ambition is to mobilise further interest from scholars working on problems of intellectual history and literary culture, and to offer a springboard for further comparative work on divination in text cultures.