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Inauguration

 

Our question for today, class: What does examination of the guts of a sacred chicken have to do with a presidential inauguration?

A spellbinding legacy of ancient Rome runs through modern English vocabulary, none more so than today’s appropriate word inaugurate.

 Inaugurate from Latin inaugurare

In Latin, the prime meaning of the verb inaugurare (from the noun augur) was to observe the flight of sacred birds and thus determine whether the gods would smile on a venture either private or public, like a new building or a national war. But the secondary and eventually more frequent meaning of inaugurare was ‘’to perform publicly an official installation.’ Even to ancient Romans then, the verb inaugurare meant to install someone into office after performing certain sacred rites of initiation. In Latin, inaugurare meant to deduce omens by watching sacred birds, hoping these portents would be favorable predictions of success.

Augury

Augury performed by an augur did not foretell the future. The Romans believed augury displayed how the gods were disposed toward an undertaking, either personal, governmental or corporate. Would the new consul rule wisely and well? Augury would reveal an answer. But it would not predict if he would live through his consulship.

Augur

The augur predicted if the gods would favour an endeavour by watching pigeons fly off and interpreting their flight patterns, by how sacred chickens pecked at their food, how they devoured individual grains of corn or millet seed.

Sometimes the sacred chicken was cut open and the augur gazed at its liver and other innards. Sometimes the freshly eviscerated entrails were cast upon holy fire (that is, tossed into a hot charcoal brazier set on a tripod directly beside the augur himself) and the smoke produced was “read” by the augur.

 

Did Cicero Believe in Augury?

Did educated Romans believe augury with a deep religious conviction? They did not. The greatest Roman lawyer Cicero tells us directly in one of his choicest scrolls that he thought augury was drivel and nonsense.

Cicero, who was one of the College of Augurs himself, wrote an entire book, still extant, for the sole purpose of ridiculing auguries and superstitions (De Divinatione by Marcus Tullius Cicero), but not, Cicero tells us, not religion itself, not the official state religion of Rome about Jupiter and Mars and not the various weird mystery religions popular in Rome like Mithraism. Do note that Cicero was no slavering fan of the Roman pantheon. He thought that Jupiter, if he existed at all, took very little interest in earthly problems. Randy old Jupiter was far too busy devising metamorphosis protocols that might enable him to change into a swan and jump the poor damsel Leda. The old copycat! His fellow god, that Greek upstart Zeus, had already perfected such a transformation years before and Leda had born Zeus two kiddies, both hatched from eggs! You can bet a whole forum that caused neighborhood gossip.

 

Roman Peasants Needed Gods?

But, as to Roman religion, Cicero thought it was necessary for profundum vulgum ‘the lower orders of humankind’ to believe a certain amount of mystical claptrap. It kept such losers quiescent and offered them pathetic scraps of hope that there might exist a post-mortem, post Romam paradise into which they would be conveyed by Smiling Fate, perhaps astride gilt chariots drawn by winged horses, not as cringing, leprous underdogs with the I.Q.s of beach pebbles, but as mighty Caesars, every trembling one of them.

Poor credulous ninnies!

But Cicero advised his wealthy Roman legal clients who wished to get on, in the world of Roman commerce, to always have augury performed and to pretend to believe in it. Does that sound much different than present day Christians? I don’t think so.

 

Hark, Marcus! The Twittering of Teeny Birdlets!

How birds chirped and tweeted might also reveal to the augur if Jupiter felt disposed in a kindly manner toward, say, Marcus Valentianus’ trip from Naples to Pompeii to sell a donkey-train load of fat amphorae filled with garum, a rich fish paste made from tiny Mediterranean fish like the scomber. Garum, a sort of pricy ketchup of ancient Rome, was the condiment of choice for wealthy seaside dwellers lolling in sybaritic ease on purple pillows in Pompeian villas. The ancient Romans slathered garum on everything they ate, including the occasional nude slave! Especially when an orgy lapsed into tedium.

The augurs had a union, the College of Augurs, which had real clout in ancient Rome. An unfavorable auspices (the prediction itself) could cause a major event to be postponed or cancelled. In English, we still have both that noun and its adjective. We still say it was an auspicious occasion for the wedding. The sun shone. The bride glowed. The groom left his mistress at the motel and arrived on time. We still convene meetings under the auspices of (the good graces of, the empowering authority of, the patronage of) the mayor.

 

Etymology of Augur

There are two suggestions. Augur might be a blend of two Latin words: avis ‘bird’ + garrire ‘to chatter, to chirp, to blab.’ In this hypothetical and to me unlikely origin, the av- of avis must become au and the gar becomes gur to produce augur. This is actually an etymology first proffered by ancient Roman authors. It is unlikely because there are very few other words in Latin, words whose roots are definitely known, that behave with such vowel-clipping and vowel-transforming starkness.

 

The third standing figure from the left is an augur. He holds his lituus, the curved wand of Etruscan and later Roman divination, and points one hand at the bird flying toward him. This mural painted in rich iron oxide hues is from the magnificent “Tomb of the Augurs” at the Etruscan necropolis near Tarquinia in Italy.

 

Auspex

But there is a reason ancient Roman word mavens were drawn to the “bird-chirp” origin of their word augur. A close synonym in Latin for augur was the word auspex, auspicis, an enunciatory contraction of an earlier form like avispex ‘guy who watches the birds’ = avis ‘bird’ + -spex noun from specere ‘to look closely at, to observe, to behold.’

We know that Latin verb specere/-spicere in English derivatives like:

aspect

circumspection

in retrospect

inspector

introspective

good prospects

self-respect

suspect & suspicion

 

The Latin plural of auspex is auspices. One Latin noun that was a synonym for augurium ‘the act of performing an augury’ was the noun auspicium.

Augur from Augere

I’m with the etymologist Fick who suggested that augur is from augere, a Latin verb that means ‘to increase, to promote (knowledge of something)’ so that the Latin agent noun augur is from an earlier *augor ‘one who increases our knowledge of the gods’ will by various means of divination.’

 

Haruspex

Sometimes a separate and distinct word was used for a diviner who only examined the entrails of sacrificed animals, not just chickens, but the livers of sheep, the galls of swine, the hearts of goats. He was called a haruspex from an Old Latin root *haru- that meant ‘guts’ + spex from the verb specere “to look closely at, to examine, to behold.’

The Old Latin *haru- was cognate with a Greek root which we meet in English medical terms like the phrase umbilical chord. The Greek cognate of Latin *haru- was χορδή chorde ‘a string of gut’ or ‘the string of a lyre.’

 

The Most Famous Roman Augury Not Performed

Recounted by many Roman writers throughout her history, this familiar anecdote was a cautionary tale passed on to make superstitious Romans nervous about the petulance and mopery of their gods, for the less well educated ancient Roman believed that the slightest infraction of divine writ would send Jupiter himself into a colossal hissy-fit, from which the transgressor might never recover.

The Roman general Publius Claudius Pulcher (died 249 BCE) was consul and commander of the Roman fleet fighting the navy of Carthage in the Mediterranean Sea during the first Punic War. Just before the Battle of Drepanum off the western coast of Sicily, like any good Roman general Publius called for an augury to be performed, that he might see if the gods would favour Rome in this upcoming naval battle.

Suddenly on deck the augur tugged at his toga, cringed and bent low before the mighty general. Deeply embarrassed was the augur because the sacred chickens would not eat!

If the damn chickens did not peck at the grain tossed down on the deck of the general’s ship, how would his soldiers and naval officers know if Neptune and his buddy-god Mars were smiling on them, if the sea god and the god of war would grant the Romans yet another crushing aquatic victory?

General Publius ordered his on-board augur to cast the corn niblets a second time upon the deck. A second time the frowsy chickens looked down their beaks at the corn kernels and refused to eat. They clucked stupidly and looked up at the augur holding his short lituus or diviner's rod. One chicken pecked at the augur’s left toe. He was wearing sandals and the peck hurt.

Publius was nervous and full of rage. The Romans had little experience in naval warfare prior to the First Punic War, whereas the Phoenician or Punic navy from Carthage comprised the best sailors on the Mediterranean, oarsmen and coxswains with years of peacetime training in the rowing of Phoenician triremes (war ships with three levels of rowers propeling the ship).

Then General Publius squinted. Flashing mirrors from other Roman ships told in primitive signal code that Phoenician triremes now sped toward his Roman fleet. The sands of destiny spilled like dried Roman blood through an hourglass held high at the bow of the general’s ship by the slave of the watch. Publius kicked the gunwales in growing rage. Still the sacred chickens did not eat one kernel. Screaming above the roar of the waves, General Publius ordered his augur to put the chickens back into their cages. Pale with dread, the augur did so.

Then, exasperated, Publius himself picked up one of the cages and tossed the scared and sacred chickens, cage by squawking cage, overboard, into the slate-grey billows of the Mediterranean. “If you little buggers don’t want to eat, maybe you’d like to go for a swim?” yelled Publius.

What can I tell you, history lovers? Flapping flightless, useless wings, all the sacred chickens drowned.

Later that day Publius lost the sea battle of Drepanum. Unwisely had the general defied Fate and the ordained ceremonies of Jupiter and the gods. Immediately Publius was recalled to Rome and publicly humiliated as a loser. Soon afterward the hapless general committed suicide, a self-destruction brought on by fatal shame. From the long perspective of historical déjà-vu, one can only gaze backward in time and murmur thoughtfully, “I told you and I told you, Publius, don’t fuckin’ mess with the sacred chickens.”

It does not matter that we today, reading the tale, realize the Romans loved this story because it blamed the gods and was exculpatory of Roman incompetence. Who knew the sacred chickens would go on a diet six minutes before a war started? Who could know? Auguries never revealed that kind of info. The anecdote conveniently omits the fact that the Romans did not know a damn thing about how to conduct a battle at sea. Rome however was a quick learner. Eventually Rome won the Punic wars and destroyed Carthage, fulfilling the order of Cato the Elder, a senator who years before had cried out repeatedly, “Carthago delenda est!” Carthage must be destroyed! And so it was. By Rome.

 

Yes, inauguration, like many words, has a history and has something to tell present-day users of English, as many of us watch the entrance into office of a benevolent American president, Barack Obama, accompanied in his ceremony by our good will, by our love and by our great hope for a United States’ future cleansed of the filth of two Bush administrations.

 

 

Any comments, emendations, additional word lore?

Please email it to me at

canadiansayings@mountaincable.net

 

 

 

 

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