2 - On Divinatory Practices and la raison des signes in Classical Greece

Summary

Thus speaks Prometheus, as he was most likely staged by Aeschylus in mid-fifth century BC Athens. Portrayed in chains in the outer reaches of the inhabited world, in the far and desert North, the hero addresses the chorus of Oceanids, singing from the orchestra to the public gathered in the theater dedicated to Dionysos Eleuthereus at the foot of the Acropolis. In this famous monologue, Prometheus enumerates and boasts about the different technical arts he has invented for the mortals. Among these tékhnai (τέχναι) he mentions various divinatory practices (mantikḗ [μαντική], line 484): namely (1) the interpretation of dreams, of omens, or of connections and coincidences (sumbóloi [συμβόλοι], line 487) as may happen along the way; (2) the observation of different species of rapacious birds in flight; (3) the examination of the shape and glint of a sacrificed animal’s viscera and liver; and finally (4) the reading of smoke and flames emanating from the sacrificial portion offered to the gods. All these divinatory practices belong to a long list of gifts bestowed by Prometheus: from the invention of numbers and of the alphabet (μνήμην ἁπάντων, μουσομήτορ’ ἐργάνην ‘the tool that enables all things to be remembered and is mother of the Muses’, line 461),³ to the beneficial remedies of medicine, mentioning also the yoke and harness that enable the use of animals, especially for plowing, the reading of the rising and setting of the stars for the sake of agricultural labor, the sailing for navigation, and the working of metals ‘hidden beneath the earth’ (lines 500–501), namely copper, iron, silver, and gold.