The institutional studies presented in the three preceding chapters may provide a firmer foundation on which to examine a series of incidents, in the second half of the third century bc, in which Roman commanders—Consuls all—ignored prohibitive auspices, or openly mounted a challenge to the rule of auspices as such. In 324 V (or perhaps 301—who can say?), Fabius Maximus Rullianus the Magister Equitum had engaged the enemy: incertis auspiciis, according to the Dictator Papirius Cursor, whose own auspices were in that dubious state and affected those of his deputy. But Rullianus had not called into question the auspices themselves. Chafing at the subordination of his auspices to those of the Dictator, and asserting the independence of his own and of his imperium, he evidently claimed to have acted with an affirmative response from Iuppiter. (Thus, at least, is how the episode was remembered and interpreted around the turn of the third to the second century.) In the tradition as it survives in Livy, Rullianus scored a victory (or two), although in the original telling a defeat seems to have resulted from his action.1 Not until three quarters of a century had passed—in the traditional reckoning—do we hear of attempts by Roman commanders to actually reject the auspices under which they were to go in harm’s way.
The earliest three cases belong to the First Punic War. In two of them, no uncertainty or ambiguity attached to the situation, and the challenge came in the form of a flat-out refusal to let the auspices govern a military operation. The outcome, too, was unambiguous: two fleets perished—one in combat, the other in a storm. The third pursued a more subtle approach, though with more fundamental consequences had it succeeded. All three will be examined next.
In 249 bc, the Consul P. Claudius Pulcher lost most of his fleet (only 30 out of somewhere between 120 and 200 ships escaped)2 in the Battle of Drepana. Claudius, as is well known, had the Chickens thrown into the sea when they refused to eat.3 Not only that; his colleague, L. Iunius Pullus, later in the year lost another fleet—some 120 warships and 800 transports—in a gale off Cape Pachynus. Like Claudius, he had disobeyed the auspices: his Chickens would not eat, yet he sailed anyway. From an augural perspective, in both instances the question of what happened is closely tied to the question of where it happened.
First, Claudius. When and where did he commit his outrage against the Chickens? When seeking the required auspices before the Battle of Drepana, it is generally assumed; but some scholars, pointing to a troublesome note in Servius and to the word profectus in the Periochae of Livy, thought it happened in Rome, when the Consul took his “auspices for departure” from the City.4 Oddly enough, although several of the sources reporting the incident appear to support the communis opinio, none but Servius and Suetonius state a precise location. To wit:
(1) Cic. ND 2.7: nihil nos P. Claudi bello Punico primo temeritas movebit, qui etiam per iocum deos inridens, cum cavea liberati pulli non pascerentur, mergi eos in aquam iussit, ut biberent quoniam esse nollent? qui risus classe devicta multas ipsi lacrimas, magnam populo Romano cladem attulit. quid? collega eius Iunius eodem bello nonne tempestate classem amisit, cum auspiciis non paruisset? itaque Claudius a populo condemnatus est, Iunius necem sibi ipse conscivit.
“When the Chickens were let out of their cage and would not feed, P. Claudius, in the First Punic War, ordered them drowned in the water, so they could drink since they did not want to eat. That joke, when his fleet suffered defeat, resulted in many tears and a great catastrophe for the Roman People. And to make matters worse, Claudius’ colleague, Iunius, during the same war lost his fleet in a storm because he would not obey the auspices. Claudius was condemned (in a trial) by the People, while Iunius committed suicide.”
(2) Cic. Div. 1.29: … ut P. Claudius, Appi Caeci filius, eiusque collega L. Iunius classis maxumas perdiderunt, cum vitio navigassent.
“P. Claudius, son of Appius Caecus, and his colleague L. Iunius lost huge fleets when they sailed under flawed auspices.”
(3) Cic. Div. 2.20: si enim fatum fuit classes populi Romani bello Punico primo, alteram naufragio, alteram a Poenis depressam interire, etiamsi tripudium solistumum pulli fecissent L. Iunio et P. Claudio consulibus, classes tamen interissent.
“If it was fated for Roman fleets to perish in the First Punic War—one suffering shipwreck, the other sunk by the Carthaginians—those fleets, even if the feeding Chickens had given the most favorable ‘dancing’ display to the Consuls L. Iunius and P. Claudius, would still have perished.”
(4) Cic. Div. 2.71: … P. Claudius L. Iunius consules, qui contra auspicia navigaverunt … iure igitur alter populi iudicio damnatus est, alter mortem sibi ipse conscivit.
“Of the Consuls P. Claudius and L. Iunius, who had sailed in violation of the auspices, one was rightfully condemned in a trial before the People, the other committed suicide.”
(5) Livy Per. 19: Claudius Pulcher cos. contra auspicia profectus—iussit mergi pullos, qui cibari nolebant—infeliciter adversus Carthaginienses classe pugnavit.
“The Consul Claudius Pulcher, having set out in violation of the auspices—he ordered the Chickens to be drowned, since they refused to eat—fought badly with his fleet against the Carthaginians.”
(6) Val. Max. 1.4.3 Par.: P. Claudius bello Punico, cum proelium navale committere vellet auspiciaque more maiorum petisset et pullarius non exire cavea pullos nuntiasset, abici eos in mare iussit dicens, “quia esse nolunt, bibant.”
“P. Claudius, in the Punic War, intending to commence battle at sea and having sought auspices in the customary manner, when receiving a report from the chicken tender that the Chickens were not leaving their cage, ordered them thrown into the sea, saying ‘Since they don’t want to eat, let them drink’. ”
(7) Val. Max. 1.4.4 Par.: L. Iunius P. Claudii collega neglectis auspiciis classem tempestate amisit damnationisque ignominiam voluntaria morte praevenit.
“L. Iunius, the colleague of P. Claudius, lost his fleet in a storm after disregarding the auspices; he avoided the humiliation of (trial and) conviction by dying of his own free will.”
(8) Val. Max. 1.4.3 Nep.: P. Claudius praeceps animi primo bello Punico pullarium consuluit. quicum dixisset non vesci pullos, quod malum omen est, “bibant” inquit et in mare proici iussit. mox classem apud Aegates insulas cum multo rei pub. damno et suo exitio amisit.
“P. Claudius, being of an impetuous disposition, in the First Punic War consulted his chicken tender. When the latter told him that the Chickens were not eating—which is a bad sign—he said, ‘Let them drink,’ and ordered them thrown into the sea. Soon afterwards he lost his fleet at the Aegates Islands, with great damage to the State and the loss of his own life.”
(9) Suet. Tib. 2.2: Claudius Pulcher apud Siciliam non pascentibus in auspicando pullis ac per contemptum religionis mari demersis, quasi ut biberent quando esse nollent, proelium navale iniit.
“Having drowned the Chickens in the sea, both because they would not feed and out of religious contempt (to let them drink, so to speak, since they did not want to eat), Claudius Pulcher, in Sicily, commenced a naval battle.”
(10) Flor. 1.18.29: Appio [sic] Claudio consule non ab hostibus sed a dis superatus est [sc. p. R.], quorum auspicia contempserat, ibi statim classe demersa, ubi ille praecipitari pullos iusserat, quod pugnare ab iis vetaretur.5
“Under the Consul Appius Claudius, the Romans were defeated not by the enemy but by the gods, whose auspices he had held in contempt, and his fleet was sunk right away on the very spot where he had ordered the Chickens to be jettisoned, because he was being forbidden by them to fight.”
(11) Min. Fel. Oct. 7.4: frequentius etiam quam volebamus deorum praesentiam contempta auspicia contestata sunt. sic Allia nomen infaustum, sic Claudii et Iunii non proelium in Poenos, sed ferale naufragium est.
“Auspices that were held in contempt have borne witness to the presence of the gods more often than we would like: thus it happened at the Allia, that unlucky name, and with Claudius and Iunius—not in battle against the Carthaginians, but in a deadly shipwreck.”
(12) Min. Fel. Oct. 26.2: Clodius scilicet et Flaminius et Iunius ideo exercitus perdiderunt, quod pullorum solistimum tripudium exspectandum non putaverunt.
“Clodius and Flaminius and Iunius lost their armies precisely because they did not deem it necessary to wait for the feeding Chickens’ most favorable ‘dancing’ display.”
(13) Eutrop. 2.26.1: … Claudius contra auspicia pugnavit et a Carthaginiensibus victus est.
“Claudius fought in violation of the auspices and was defeated by the Carthaginians.”
(14) Serv. ad Aen. 6.198: nam Romanis moris fuit et in comitiis agendis et in bellis gerendis pullaria captare auguria. unde est in Livio quod cum quidam cupidus belli gerendi a tribuno plebis arceretur ne iret, pullos iussit adferri: qui cum missas non ederent fruges, inridens consul augurium ait “vel bibant,” et eos praecipitavit in Tiberim: inde navibus victor revertens [ad Africam tendens] in mari cum omnibus quos ducebat extinctus est.
“It was the Romans’ custom to obtain auspices through the Chickens both when holding assemblies and when waging war. Thus it says in Livy that, when a certain individual eager to wage war was being prevented by a Tribune of the Plebs from going, he ordered the Chicken to be brought up. When the Chickens were let out and would not eat their grains, the Consul, jeering at the auspices, said, ‘Let them drink, then,’ and pitched them into the Tiber. Later on, returning as victor with his ships [while heading towards Africa], he perished at sea along with all those under his command.”
Of thirteen (all except #7) direct references to Claudius’ violation of the auspices, seven draw an unambiguous connection to his defeat in battle (1, 3, 5, 8–10, 13); they include the two earliest sources extant (1, 3).6 Only two of these (##9, 10), however, appear to imply clearly that the drowning of the Chickens occurred during the auspication for the battle, which is to say, on the same day; a third (6) implies the same, but without mentioning the actual battle and its outcome. One reference (11) ascribes the loss of Claudius’ fleet to a storm; another by the same source (12) is too vague to determine whether the author had naufragium or pugna in mind. Two references (##2, 4) in the earliest source but one simply note that Claudius had sailed against the auspices. And then there is Servius (#14).
Servius implies that the auspication took place in close proximity to the Tiber River: clearly the scholiast imagined the incident to have occurred at or near Rome. The Chickens are thrown into the Tiber, not the sea, and a Tribune of the Plebs attempts to stop the Consul from going on campaign. If so, the incident can only be understood as taking place in connection with Claudius’ departure from the City: his ceremonies of profectio. Could Servius have been right, or was he simply confused?
Conceivably, the scholiast’s Tribune of the Plebs attempting to prevent the Consul’s departure (above, #14) could have arisen from confusion: Polybios states that, at Lilybaeum, Claudius summoned his Military Tribunes and laid out his plan for the attack on Drepana (1.49.3–4). But Polybios insists that the Tribunes readily agreed to the design (1.49.5, προχείρως δ’ αὐτῶν συγκατατιθεμένων); to postulate a mistake in Servius, one would have to assume that Livy—whom he cites here as his source—had at least one of the Military Tribunes oppose the attack. (Nor could there be any question that Livy had placed the event in Sicily.) Florus writes of a Military Tribune, ominously named Nautius, who agitated against the planned invasion of Africa in 256 among troops terrified at the thought of crossing the open sea, and had to be shown the lictor’s axe by the Consul M. Regulus before mustering the courage to embark.7 This could have happened at Rome, before the Consuls departed with their fleets for Sicily; but it might also have occurred in Sicily, during the brief refit after the Battle off Ecnomus (Polyb. 1.29.1). Confusion on the part of Servius would require, first, a false remembrance of the nature of the tribunate—plebis for militum; then, probably in consequence, transposition of the locality from Sicily to Rome (at least if stemming from Claudius’ briefing at Lilybaeum); and—if the error arose out of the Nautius episode—a confusion of Atilius Regulus with Claudius Pulcher. (Of course, Florus being Florus, there is a roughly even chance that the Nautius incident really belongs to Claudius Pulcher and the Battle of Drepana, and was misattributed to Regulus and the invasion of Africa by that author, in which case Servius would have confused its location and the nature of the tribunate, but not the general circumstances.)
None of this would seem impossible. Indeed, the troubling ad Africam tendens found in several manuscripts might derive—if authentically Servian—from a befuddled recollection of Regulus’ expedition; as the note is absent, though, from L(ipsiensis) and all the codices containing Servius auctus, it may be best with Thilo to seclude it.8 Certainly Servius was confused when he credited the Consul with victory at sea (inde navibus victor revertens) before the waves swallowed him and all his men; and in mari cum omnibus quos ducebat extinctus est9 gives no hint of a defeat in battle. One suspects a mix-up with the fleets lost in storms in 255 and 253, both times after successful operations against the enemy (Polyb. 1.36.10–37.2, 39.1–6).
Nor can an even more bizarre confusion be ruled out. Frontinus (Strat. 2.13.9) has a story about how, after the rout off Drepana, Claudius escaped: compelled to force his way through the enemy’s positions, he ordered his remaining twenty ships to be decked out as if coming from a victory, and the Carthaginians, supposing that the Romans had won the battle, in terror allowed him to pass (P. Claudius, navali proelio superatus a Poenis, cum per hostium praesidia necesse haberet erumpere, reliquas viginti naves tamquam victrices iussit ornari; atque ita Poenis existimantibus superiores fuisse acie nostros terribilis excessit). The ruse has been called “fantastic,”10 and rightly so, if taken to describe a breakout through the Punic forces in the battle itself: they could hardly have failed to notice that they were winning, and the Romans turning tail. But praesidia seems an odd choice of word for the ships in Adherbal’s line of battle. It can denote warships, of course; but normally only in the sense of an escort or guard force. In over forty references to warships, Frontinus employs the word only on three other occasions: twice it means ships guarding a harbor or shoreline, once an escort, and never ships engaged in a battle.11
What Frontinus was describing constitutes, in fact, not Claudius’ escape from the actual battle at Drepana, but a subsequent retreat past hostium praesidia—naval squadrons protecting Carthaginian strongholds along the coast of Sicily—on his journey back to Rome.12
Servius’ placing the drowning of the Chickens at Rome can be explained as the result of confusion (such as is certainly present in his apparent notion that the fleet was lost in a storm, and that the Consul perished with it); the specific mention of the Tiber river could be his own contribution, logical enough once he had come to think of Rome as the location. And yet, a case can be made for a Tribune of the Plebs seeking to block Claudius from going to war. On top of the disaster in Africa in 255 and the tremendous losses at sea in that year, and again in 253, the siege of Lilybaeum had been going poorly. As the consular year 250 was winding down (which is to say, early in 249 bc), the resourceful Carthaginian commander at Lilybaeum, Himilko, had achieved the complete destruction of the Roman siege works in a firestorm, forcing the Romans to abandon any attempt at taking the town by assault; heavy loss of life among the Roman besiegers accompanied the debacle (Polyb. 1.48.1–49.1). At the same time, famine and disease caused by rampant shortage (and perhaps spoilage) of food was ravaging the siege forces to such an extent that one of the Consuls returned home early with his army. Major political disagreements in Rome on whether and how to continue the war would not be at all surprising.13
What form the Tribune’s intervention would have taken is, of course, unknown; but a similar attempt two centuries later offers a serviceable model. In 55 bc, the Tribune C. Ateius Capito attempted to prevent M. Licinius Crassus (cos. II 55) from departing for his Parthian campaign. Ateius announced dirae during Crassus’ votorum nuncupatio on the Capitol, and when these were ignored, he tried to arrest the Consul; but other Tribunes intervened. Finally, Ateius, waiting by the city gate through which Crassus was to leave, pronounced curses over him as he crossed the pomerium.14 In a similar manner, the Tribune might have tried to vitiate, through a dirarum obnuntiatio, the ceremonies of profectio observed on the Capitol by the Consul on the day of his departure, and perhaps hurled curses (exsecrationes) at him as he was crossing the pomerium to leave the City.
Under no scenario, however, could the Consul have responded, as the scholiast alleges, by consulting the auspicium pullarium—let alone while already aboard his flagship, in the Tiber river. The Chickens conveyed Iuppiter’s permission, or lack thereof, for proceeding with an intended act of state on that day; they could not override a Tribune’s action. Nor could they cancel the effect of dirae, properly announced; and the Tribune would presumably be ready to deliver his obnuntiatio during any subsequent attempt to complete the ritual requirements of profectio.
Hence Servius, if correct about the character of the tribunate (plebis), is wrong in presenting the Consul’s consultation of the pulli as his immediate reaction to the Tribune’s obstruction. Indeed, it is very likely that the auspices under which a magistrate went out to war—and left the City paludatus—did not involve the Chickens at all. It is evident that the procedure observed whenever a commander was forced to return to Rome to repeat his auspices must have been identical to the one in which he had received them in the first place. As for the former, we know that it entailed lying down to sleep: … ubi incubare posset auspicii repetendi causa (Fest. 326.16L). Lying down on a bed inside the tabernaculum and then rising silentio between midnight and dawn constitute essential steps in obtaining auspicia de caelo or ex avibus.15 Hence the ones to be repeated were preceded by nocturnal incubation: which does not support an auspication by means of the Chickens. (This follows whether one believes in the existence of separate “auspices of departure” or subscribes to a unitary of view of magisterial auspices, according to which the Consul derived his legitimate authority to go to war from his auspices of “investiture”—obtained de caelo—and the proper observance of all rituals pertaining to profectio.) Of course, silentium—in augural parlance, the absence of any vitium—is equally required for auspices ex tripudiis, and nothing prevents the Consul from obtaining the latter in the same manner as those from the sky or birds, de nocte oriens silentio; but the fact that auspication with the Chickens could occur anywhere, anytime, especially right before battle (the need for which would not always be apparent during the previous night) makes it virtually certain that nocturnal incubation was not among its necessary elements.16
Yet again, auspices taken in (or at) the Tiber river are entirely plausible. A little-discussed and cryptic note in Servius auctus (ad Aen. 1.13) informs us about the special augural status of Ostia and the Tiber with regard to war at sea:
Ostiam vero ideo veteres consecratam esse voluerunt, sicut Tiberim, ut si quid bello navali ageretur, id auspicato fieret ex maritima et effata urbe, ut ubique coniunctum auspici, ut Tiberis, cum colonia esset.
“The ancients wanted Ostia to be consecrated, just as the Tiber, for the reason that if any operation was conducted in a war at sea, it would be done under auspices taken from a maritime and inaugurated city; so that it would everywhere be connected, as regards auspicium, just as the Tiber, with the colony.”
Evidently, war at sea was to be waged, as on land, auspicato; but without the special character of Ostia and the river, this would not be possible. In other words, a Roman commander could not simply leave the City paludatus, go aboard his flagship, and sail in harm’s way. He needed Ostia, and the Tiber.
Water, in particular streams and rivers, poses unique problems in the augural sphere. It is unstable and unreliable.17 Any course of running water, however small, if crossed unguardedly will disrupt—indeed, annul—impetrative auspices previously obtained; to preserve them intact, the magistrate must validate them each time he sets across a stream or river, in a procedure known as auspicia peremnia.18 We do not know, in fact, if auspices could even be obtained on shipboard, wholly surrounded by water, or if they required the auspicant to be on firm land.19 Nor do we know if and how one’s auspices would be affected by entering a river without crossing it, or by emerging at its mouth into the open sea.
Wherein lay the special character of Ostia? If the scholiast’s consecrata is used technically, it belongs to the realm of the ius pontificium; if untechnically, it may cover any number of augural concepts: either way, it is of no help in deciphering the town’s augural significance. Like all coloniae civium Romanorum, Ostia ranked, augurally speaking, as an urbs: it had a pomerium, inaugurated, hence effatum.20 In that regard, it did not differ from the urbs Roma; and both lay on the Tiber river. Unlike Rome, Ostia was an urbs maritima.
The Consul leaving Rome to go to war takes the auspices with him, a domo, a publicis privatisque penatibus (Livy 22.1.6)—in other words, ex urbe; this is what enables him to ask Iuppiter for auspices outside the ager Romanus. But for the Consul who goes to sea, it seems, it is not enough to carry the auspices with him from Rome: to wage war at sea auspicato, he must do so ex maritima et effata urbe. Rome was an urbs effata,21 but not maritima; Ostia was both. The note in Servius auctus does not speak of auspices as such at Ostia, of course; yet the conclusion is inescapable: in order to engage in naval warfare, the commander has to take his auspices not only from Rome (as required for any war), but also from Ostia. Carrying them with him ex urbe maritima, the Consul may now entrust himself and his fleet to the Tiber river, without fear that the water surrounding him will disrupt his auspices: presumably the question put to Iuppiter covered this important point. The Tiber in turn leads to the open sea—and furnishes an inseparable connection with the place from which the Consul took the auspices. Be it in the waters around Sicily, off the coast of Spain, or beyond the Pillars of Hercules, the Consul will be able to wage war auspicato. Whether those auspices, at Ostia or at sea, could be obtained aboard ship, or had to be taken on firm land at water’s edge, we cannot tell. (No source unequivocally says that Claudius pitched the Chickens over the side.)22
Cicero the Augur confirms that war at sea demanded auspices not merely when battle was imminent. Twice he describes both Consuls’ fault with the verb navigare (Div. 1.29, cum vitio navigassent; 2.71, qui contra auspicia navigaverunt), and not once in his four references (above, ##1–4) to those incidents does he connect the vitium of Claudius specifically with auspication before battle. Iunius, in any case, lost his fleet not when he engaged the enemy contra auspicia, but while trying to avoid a fight.23 Hence navigare is significant: the act of sailing itself required Iuppiter’s permission. What Cicero does not make clear is whether this permission needed to be sought only once—to take the fleet down the Tiber and into the open sea—or every time the fleet set sail from any port (or beach, or anchorage).
There is evidence that, by land, auspices must be obtained before the army could move out of a resting place—camp or city—even if no battle was expected on that day. A few days before Cannae, Hannibal attempted to lure the Romans into an ambush by vacating his camp during the night, leaving behind numerous items of conspicuous material value; the Consul Varro, penes quem imperium that day,24 had already ordered the army to march out of their camp and occupy that of Hannibal, filled with loot, when his colleague sent a word of caution—on top of his own hesitation, his Chickens would not eat: Paullus, cum ei sua sponte cunctanti pulli quoque auspicio non addixissent, nuntiari iam efferenti porta signa collegae iussit (Livy 22.42.8). Paullus, as Consul, naturally took his own auspices for his army, but in case of divergent answers from Iuppiter the auspices of his colleague as the day’s supreme commander would prevail. Nothing alleges that Varro had acted inappropriately with regard to the auspices; on the contrary, he called off the sortie—albeit grudgingly—when he received the news from Paullus (22.42.9). Evidently, he too had auspicated, and obtained an affirmative response; as his auspices took precedence over those of Paullus, he could have rejected his colleague’s report: yet he chose to undergo not even the slightest risk in this regard.25 But on this day Varro had set out for plunder, not for battle.
In 209 bc, after Fabius Maximus had recaptured Tarentum, Hannibal tried a similar ruse: citizens of Metapontum went to Fabius with a—false—offer to hand their town over to him if he drew near with his forces; Hannibal meanwhile lay in ambush. Fabius fell for it, but when he prepared to march his army out of Tarentum during the night, aves simul atque iterum non addixerunt.26 Like Varro, he had not expected to give battle on those days.
Unless those two examples constitute exceptions to common practice, we may conclude that auspices were required for setting out from every camp or town in which the army spent the previous night. By analogy, auspices ought to be called for whenever the fleet left the shelter of firm land. Hence the phrase contra auspicia profectus in the Periocha of Livy 19 cannot be pressed to place the drowning of the Chickens at Rome (or, rather, Ostia).
What makes one pause before following the majority of the sources in locating the event, at least by implication, immediately before the Battle of Drepana27 is Cicero. In four references he never draws a clear connection between the occurrence of the vitium and the day of the battle; twice he terms the Consul’s offense as vitio sive contra auspicia navigare; and on three occasions he treats Claudius and his colleague as a unit: P. Claudius, Appi Caeci filius, eiusque collega L. Iunius (above, #2); L. Iunio et P. Claudio consulibus (#3); P. Claudius L. Iunius consules (#4). That both had encountered the same vitium—the Chickens refusing to eat—is clear enough; but from Cicero it almost appears as if they encountered it together, on the same occasion. That could only have happened at their departure from Rome—again, presumably, at Ostia. Most chronologies of the First Punic War, though, have Iunius leave the City sometime after his colleague;28 but they rely, inevitably, on a series of unprovable assumptions that cannot invalidate the evidence of Cicero, and the only source that alludes to the Consuls’ leaving Rome certainly permits the conclusion that Iunius departed no later than Claudius, if not before him.29
On the other hand, in his most detailed—and earliest—account (#1) of Claudius’ outrage against the Chickens, Cicero mentions the vitium of Iunius rather as an afterthought, corroborating the point just made, than as the second element in a unit, and with no hint that both incidents occurred on the same occasion; and if anywhere he implies a temporal connection between the drowning and the battle he does so here, albeit barely. Nor can we be certain that the auspices taken at Ostia involved the pulli; if they were conceived as a naval parallel to the ones that gave permission to the Consul to be Consul (or, if we were to accept separate “auspices of departure,” to leave the City paludatus), one should rather think that they must be taken de caelo or ex avibus. Finally, despite a likely (and popular) groundswell of opposition against continuing the war at the beginning of consular 249, it seems doubtful that hysteria ran high enough to consume both Consuls’ pullarii with fear so far from the prospect of battle—let alone the fact that sabotaging the departure of Iunius would in effect prevent supplies from being delivered to the starving siege forces at Lilybaeum. A random failure of the Chickens to eat cannot be ruled out, of course;30 but that it should happen to both Consuls on the same day (or in short succession) would be mirum indeed. At Drepana, however, notwithstanding the apparent eagerness at least of the legionary troops (expecting lots of easy loot) embarked for the operation, uneasiness could have prevailed at the thought of going into battle with an undermanned fleet, partially untrained crews, and an unpopular commander.31
For Iunius Pullus, two Sicilian locations of the vitium can be identified. Having left Rome with a large convoy of transports to resupply the Roman siege forces at Lilybaeum, the Consul arrived at Messana, where he was joined by those ships “that had gathered there from the camp and from the rest of Sicily” (ἀφικόμενος εἰς τὴν Μεσσήνην καὶ προσλαβὼν τὰ συνηντηκότα τῶν πλοίων ἀπό τε τοῦ στρατοπέδου καὶ τῆς ἄλλης Σικελίας, Polyb. 1.52.6). The “ships from the camp” have caused much needless headache. Everywhere else in this part of Polybios’ narrative (1.42–55), τὸ στρατόπεδον refers, without exception, to the Roman camp and army engaged in the siege of Lilybaeum: it cannot possibly mean something different—and entirely unknown—here.32 The alleged difficulty arises only from a preconceived notion that if Lilybaeum is meant, the ships must have left it before Drepana, as no Roman ships could have made it from Lilybaeum to Messana after the battle, with Adherbal’s (and soon, Qarthalo’s) fleet blocking the way.33 Of course, nothing (except perhaps a small Punic squadron at Herakleia) prevented them from simply sailing along the southern coast of Sicily, and past Syracuse to Messana.
From Messana, Iunius proceeded to Syracuse, with his fleet now grown to 120 warships and 800 transports. At Syracuse, he sent about half of this force ahead towards Lilybaeum, while waiting with the remainder for stragglers and additional grain from the inland. Off the south coast of Sicily, possibly in the vicinity of Phintias, the advance force was intercepted by a large Punic fleet under Qarthalo, and forced to seek shelter in a bay, where they succeeded in holding off capture by the enemy (Polyb. 1.52.5–8; 53.8–13; Diod. 24.1.7).
At this point accounts diverge. According to Polybios, when the Consul arrived with the rest of his fleet sometime later, Qarthalo prevented him from linking up with the advance force, and Iunius, not daring to fight but unable to flee, anchored along a rocky and dangerous shore, “thinking it preferable to suffer whatever must be suffered than to allow his own army, men and all, to fall into the hands of the enemy” (κρίνων αἱρετώτερον ὑπάρχειν ὃ τι δέοι παθεῖν μᾶλλον ἢ τοῖς πολεμίοις αὔτανδρον τὸ σφέτερον στρατόπεδον ὑποχείριον ποιῆσαι, 1.54.1–4). In Diodoros (24.1.8–9), Iunius apparently was able to join his advance force; but when Qarthalo renewed his attack on the now combined fleets, the Consul, hoping to salvage the transports and their supplies, decided to retreat to Syracuse. Being overtaken by the Carthaginians, he fled towards the land, judging the fear of shipwreck to be less than the danger posed by the enemy (περικατάληπτος γενόμενος κατέφυγε πρὸς τὴν γῆν, ἐν ἐλάττονι θέμενος τὸν ἀπὸ τῆς ναυαγίας φόβον τοῦ παρὰ τῶν πολεμίων κινδύνου, 24.4). A sudden storm coming up from the open sea shattered the entire Roman fleet (Diod. 24.1.9), or both halves of it (Polyb. 1.54.5–8), on the lee shore, with tremendous losses; only two of the warships survived. (Qarthalo barely managed to round Cape Pachynus and find protection in its lee.)
No source reports the precise occasion on which Iunius disobeyed the auspices. But if auspices were necessary, as seems likely, before leaving port (whether for battle or otherwise), the vitium would have occurred either on his departure from Syracuse or when he chose to sail back to Syracuse from Phintias rather than risk a battle with Qarthalo’s fleet. As for the Chickens, a natural loss of appetite cannot be ruled out. But If Diodoros is correct, many on the Consul’s staff—including his pullarii—might well have considered it preferable to await the enemy in the relative safety of the anchorage at Phintias. If, on the other hand, Polybios has it right, and Iunius encountered Qarthalo somewhere before he could link up with the advance force, he would have incurred the vitium when auspicating before sailing from Syracuse: as he would have received the news of Drepana by then (along with the surviving ships), his pullarii might have found it prudent to restrain the Consul from venturing out.
Given that auspices were unquestionably required before an intended battle, and almost certainly before setting sail for any reason, we may safely assume that both Claudius and Iunius consulted the Chickens on the day of their respective disasters. The accounts of the drowning in Valerius Maximus (above, #6, cf. 8) and, to a lesser extent, Suetonius (#9) show striking verbal parallels to Cicero’s (#1), but do not appear to have been culled directly from the latter: Valerius prominently features a pullarius and makes an explicit connection between auspication and battle; Suetonius makes the same connection and expressly locates the incident apud Siciliam (three elements not in Cicero). One suspects a common source that probably was also used by Livy, if not transmitted by him directly to Valerius. Since that source also contained Cicero’s note of Iunius Pullus’ suicide (#7; cf. 1, 4), one may conclude that it, and presumably Livy, told the story of Claudius and Iunius essentially as did Cicero, but with some added detail (the pullarius) and an unambiguous location, at least for Claudius, in Sicily. Of the two undeniable elements of confusion in Servius’ account—fleet lost in storm, and Consul drowned with it—the first occurs already in Minucius Felix (#11); it appears to have gained currency centuries before the scholiast, and cannot have come from Livy, at least not his full text. The second is also present in Ianuarius Nepotianus, the fifth-century excerptor of Valerius Maximus (#8).34 The error might be due, of course, to Valerius himself; but its absence in the other excerpt—that of Iulius Paris—renders such a conclusion doubtful: Paris generally summarizes the original in a faithful and succinct manner, whereas Nepotianus is given to mistakes, and not above inserting the occasional tidbit he found elsewhere.35 What matters is that the error did not come from Livy. Hence Servius’ attribution of his version to Livy rests on shaky ground: the historian almost certainly placed the drowning immediately before the Battle of Drepana.36 Certainty eludes us; but all in all, it appears more probable that the Consuls incurred their vitia involving the pulli on the occasion of their disasters, rather than on their departure from Rome (or Ostia).37
Yet Servius would not have invented out of whole cloth the Tribune’s attempt to keep the Consul from leaving the City to go to war. That much he must have read somewhere, be it in Livy, be it in another author. Just as he—or probably already his source—conflated Claudius’ disaster at Drepana with the catastrophic loss of fleets in storms, he mixed up the Tribune’s intervention (whether or not it involved augural tools such as the annunciation of dirae) at the Consul’s departure from Rome with the drowning of the Chickens, at dawn before the battle, in Sicily.
After the disaster at Drepana, Claudius returned to Rome. The Senate now instructed him to name a Dictator. Thumbing his nose at them, Claudius named his scriba, who abdicated his office forthwith. Eventually, A. Atilius Caiatinus (cos. II 254) was installed as Dictator, and assumed command in Sicily.38 By that time, in Rome’s sole success of that year, Iunius Pullus had already seized Eryx from the Carthaginians, and perhaps been captured by them in turn (Zonar. 8.15).
The appointment of a Dictator did not, however, relieve the Consuls of personal responsibility for their violation of the auspices. Two Tribunes of the Plebs prosecuted Claudius for perduellio—a capital charge; on the day of the vote, vitium intervened in the form of a thunderstorm. Subsequently, the Tribunes, prevented from bringing the same charge again, persuaded the People to impose a fine of 120,000 As instead.39
The Bobbio scholiast attributed the ban on double jeopardy to tribunician intercession, aimed at preventing a man from being accused of treason twice by the same individuals in the same magistracy (postea tr. pl. intercesserunt ne idem homines in eodem magistratu perduellionis bis eundem accusarent). In fact, it arose almost certainly out of an augural rule preserved by Cicero, holding that if any event prevents the proceedings on the appointed day, be it on account of auspices or of a justifiable excuse, the entire case and trial is dropped: … si qua res illum diem aut auspiciis aut excusatione sustulit, tota causa iudiciumque sublatum est (Dom. 45); the augural barrier against a second prosecution is also emphasized by Valerius Maximus (subito coorti imbris beneficio tutus fuit a damnatione: discussa enim quaestione aliam velut dis interpellantibus de integro instaurari non placuit). The scholiast, of course, need not be altogether wrong: if this was the first time a iudicium populi had been interrupted by a storm, or the first time an attempt was made to resume proceedings after such an interruption, tribunician action may have been necessary to lend force to the Augurs’ ruling—especially if popular rage against Claudius ran high enough to sweep aside their objections.40 “Even the augurs must have been baffled by Jupiter’s decision to save Claudius.”41
Was Claudius tried still during his consulship? Tribunician prosecution of an incumbent magistrate was possible and did occur, but only to impose multae, not on capital charges—unless they involved a violation of tribunician rights, which was not the case with Claudius Pulcher.42 In all probability, therefore, both his prosecutions took place in consular 248, after he had completed his term; less than three years later, he was dead. (In 246, Claudius’ sister was fined 25,000 As for publicly expressing her wish that her brother were still alive, so that he might lose another fleet, and thus alleviate what she deemed overcrowding in the City.)43
His colleague, it would seem, did not outlive him, or not for long. Cicero reports that Iunius committed suicide (above, ##1, 4), and Valerius Maximus adds that he did so to escape conviction (#7); again, Livy presumably told the same essential facts as Cicero, with expanded context.
No charge in Iunius’ prosecution is recorded, but the case of Claudius makes perduellio virtually certain. Not so, the date. Zonaras (8.15) notes that after capturing Eryx, Iunius himself fell into Punic hands. Unless Dio or his epitomizer made this statement in error, one may assume that Iunius was released as part of the prisoner exchange agreed upon in 247.44 Commanders who had lost larger fleets in storms, with greater loss of life, had returned in triumph.45 (That in itself assures that he was prosecuted not simply for the loss of his fleet, but for his violation of the auspices.) Iunius came home from captivity to a charge of treason, and found that no defense availed. He had sailed against the auspices: the fact was manifest, and nothing else mattered—not his reasons, not the circumstances. Perhaps Iuppiter would have saved him, too, as he had Claudius, on the day of the trial. Iunius chose not to wait, and took his own life.46
The events of 249 bc, when both Consuls refused to obey the auspices, may also shed new light on a mysterious incident towards the end of the First Punic War. The Consul of 241, Q. Lutatius Cerco, attempted to consult the famous oracle of Fortuna Primigenia at Praeneste before taking up his command; the Senate objected on the grounds that he should manage public affairs auspiciis patriis, non alienigenis, and Lutatius desisted. (Suspicion has been voiced repeatedly that “Cerco” in the manuscripts is in error for “Catulus,” and indeed the latter, the famous Consul of 242, appears far more probable; for our present purpose, though, it does not matter.)47 What exactly had been Lutatius’ objective?
The incident is reported by the two excerptors of Valerius Maximus, Iulius Paris and Ianuarius Nepotianus, under the rubric de superstitionibus.
Exc. Par. 1.3.2: Lutatius Cerco, qui primum Punicum bellum confecit, a senatu prohibitus est sortes Fortunae Praenestinae adire: auspiciis enim patriis, non alienigenis rem publicam administrari iudicabant oportere.
“Lutatius Cerco, who brought the First Punic War to an end, was prohibited by the Senate to approach the lots of Fortuna Praenestina: for they judged that the res publica should be managed under the ancestral auspices, not foreign ones.”
Exc. Nep. 1.3.2: Lutatium Cerconem, confectorem primi Punici belli, fama extitit velle ad Praenestinam Fortunam † sortes mittere sive colligere. hoc cognito senatus inhibuit extraria responsa † consultorum disquiri. iussum legatis est aedilibusque in haec missis, ut, si consuluisset, ad supplicium Romam reduceretur. denique adeo profuit factum, ut † ex incerta ei Romana auspicia fuerint: nam ab altaribus patriis profectus Egadas opulentissimas insulas in conspectu Carthaginis populatus est.
“The story goes that Lutatius Cerco, the man who brought the First Punic War to an end, wanted † to send or collect lots at (or to?) Fortuna Praenestina. On learning of this, the Senate forbade that inquiries into foreign responses be made † of individuals consulting (?). Orders were issued to the envoys and Aediles dispatched in this regard that, should he have consulted (sc. the oracle), he was to be brought back to Rome for punishment. The eventual outcome of this action was highly beneficial, with the result that there were Roman auspices for him † ex incerta: for having set out from the ancestral altars, he plundered the Aegates islands—exceedingly wealthy—in full view of Carthage.”
Despite its three vexing cruces, the text of Nepotianus, when read in tandem with Paris, offers a coherent account.48 There can be no question of the Consul sending others to Praeneste: sortes mittere sive colligere simply denotes the procedure of consulting Fortuna, and ad here must be situational, not directional: “there was talk that Lutatius Cerco intended to cast, or rather collect, the lots at/before Fortuna Praenestina.”49 Next, with senatus inhibuit extraria responsa consultorum disquiri Nepotianus clearly means to say that the Senate wanted to prohibit the consultation of foreign oracles, not protect their responses by preventing investigations of such consultations. Paris’ Lutatius … prohibitus est sortes … adire unequivocally marks the prohibition as aimed at Cerco specifically, hence not a general ban on consulting the Praenestine oracle; which also follows from Nepotianus’ ut si consuluisset … Romam reduceretur. Thus consultorum cannot stand: perhaps a consule Rom<ano> (Kempf) or, preferably, consuli Rom<ano> (Gertz).50 Finally, the ungrammatical ut ex incerta ei Romana auspicia fuerint. Both Foertsch’s exin certa (“right away, Roman auspices were certain for him = he obtained unambiguous Roman auspices”) and Halm’s ex incertis (“instead of uncertain auspices he received Roman ones”) furnish an acceptable meaning.51 Under either emendation, the Consul previously had either not obtained Roman auspices—which is to say, no auspices at all—or only such as were uncertain. But, throughout, the opposition evidently intended is less one of Romana and incerta auspicia than of Romana or patria auspicia and extraria responsa or alienigena auspicia. Perhaps the textual problem includes Romana: ut ex in<certis> certa ei Roma<e> auspicia fuerint (“with the result that, at Rome, instead of uncertain auspices he received certain ones”) would yield a perfectly good sense, contrasting certain with uncertain auspices, while preserving the opposition of foreign and ancestral ones, of Rome and Praeneste.
It is this latter element that concerns us here. Two scholars in the past thirty-odd years have tried to shed light on this strange episode, and although they arrive at divergent reconstructions of the presumed political maneuvering behind it, they both agree on a fundamental point: in proposing to consult the oracle at Praeneste, Lutatius intended not to push aside the traditional auspices or replace them altogether, but to complement them.52 That, however, is the question.
Both excerptors, Paris as well as Nepotianus, undeniably present the issue as a matter of alternatives: auspicia patria versus extraria responsa. Neither offers any hint that Lutatius merely aimed at consulting the lots of Fortuna in addition to the auspices, and however one restores the text, Nepotianus’ account implies that, prior to the incident, the Consul had either obtained no auspices at all or only uncertain ones. If he lacked auspices altogether, Fortuna could not furnish them (for all the other advice she might offer), that being Iuppiter’s prerogative; if his auspices were flawed or uncertain, the lots at Praeneste, falling outside the ius augurale, could be of no assistance in resolving whatever doubts existed, or remove the vitium that tainted them. Nor does one readily comprehend the Senate’s vehement reaction, if additional guidance was the only thing at stake. Ziółkowski and Wardle both insist that Lutatius’ attempt posed a serious threat to the auspices:53 how so, if it was meant to be merely complementary? “The two forms of divination did not compete with one another”;54 auspices concerned Iuppiter’s permission to proceed with an intended action on that day, whereas oracles gave advice on how to achieve a desired result. As long as the Consul’s auspices were in order, the sortes ought to have posed no threat; if they were not, the oracle could not help—unless the consultation was conceived to take their place.
In rejecting an intended substitution of the sortes for the auspices, Ziółkowksi noted the difficulty of consulting daily with the Praenestine oracle while the Consul was in Sicily. Yet that would have been the point precisely: instead of the daily auspication that mos demanded, a single consultation of Fortuna was to grant divine sanction to the whole campaign. If the Consul cast the lots at Praeneste, then waged his war successfully without auspices, he could create a precedent that would free future commanders from the restrictions the auspices imposed on them. It would not have put an end to auspices as such; certainly those who wished to observe the old ways would retain the ability to do so. But an alternative would have been established, and instead of being essential, auspices henceforth could be viewed as merely advisory, and optional. In light of what had happened less than a decade earlier, when one Consul displayed open contempt for the ancient practice, the other if not opposition then at least indifference to it, the probability increases considerably that this indeed was what Lutatius had in mind.
We may discern two basic scenarios of what happened. The Consul, having just left the City paludatus, was alerted to the fact that his auspices had become incerta. (If ex incertis could be established as the correct reading, this scenario would be nearly certain.) Instead of returning to the City to repeat them, he proposed to seek guidance from Fortuna Primigenia at Praeneste: if successful in this, he would maintain that he had no further need of auspices. Then again, Lutatius may have attempted to consult the oracle before he received any auspices: as Consul designate but still privatus. Instead of entering upon his consulship at Rome and obtaining his initial auspices there, followed by the usual ceremonies of profectio, Lutatius intended to take office in Praeneste, consulting the lots but dispensing with auspices. (A radical notion, it may seem; but within a quarter of a century a situation very similar to this was to unfold.55)
The attempt was greeted in the Senate with a fiercely negative response. Officials were sent to Praeneste, with instructions to keep Lutatius from going through with the consultation, or bring him back to Rome should it already have occurred. Lutatius chose not to push the matter.
The Challenge to the Auspices: Studies on Magisterial Power in the Middle Roman Republic. C. F. Konrad, Oxford University Press. © C. F. Konrad 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192855527.003.0005