Chapter 9 - Falsifying the Auspices in Republican Politics

Summary

This paper explores what it meant to ‘falsify the auspices’ (auspicia ementiri) in Republican Rome, probing the importance of allegations of auspicial falsification in Roman politics and oratory. I argue that the act and the charge of ‘falsifying the auspices’ were effective and dangerous in Rome because they evoked and involved genuine anxieties about the gods’ attitude towards the Roman state. I focus on the debate about auspices between M. Licinius Crassus, C. Ateius Capito, and Ap. Claudius Pulcher in the 50s BC, seeking to understand and explain the behaviour of all parties. Republican politicians’ maneuvering and reasoning in this case demonstrates that attempts to invoke the gods in public discourse and to involve them in public affairs were seen as risky and potentially dangerous. If we are fully to understand how politics worked in the Republic, we must consider not just humans’ machinations against each other, but also their attempts to involve the gods themselves as agents in Roman life.