AUGURS. - Roman priests expert in divination, who from the species, flight, number and song of birds interpreted the divine will, both for private affairs, through the private augurs, who soon disappeared and are little known, and for public affairs through the public augurs; their college, one of the four major priestly colleges, is traced back to Romulus or Numa.
The task of the augurs, whose etymology the moderns derive from avis rather than from augere, was to delimit the templum for the auspices in the Auguraculum in arce, on the Capitoline, to inaugurate sacred buildings and persons, to fix and control the pomerium. Until 300 B.C. it seems to have consisted of 5 patrician members. The Ogulnian law of that year, opening the college to the plebeians, raised the number to 9, which was later increased to 15 and 16. The office was for life and was not lost for any reason. The replacement of members took place by co-optation, until the Domitian law of 103 B.C. prescribed election by the comitia. The college, having neither a seat nor a magister, assembled in the house of an augur and was presided over by the eldest (Cicero, De Senect., 18, 64). Among the activities of the augurs, whose distinctive marks were the lituus, for delimiting the templum, and the trabea of purple and scarlet, the most notable were the augurium salutis, the amburbium and the augurium canarium. But the political importance of the college depended on its function as official interpreter of the public auspices, excluding the military ones, since the initiative of the auspice (spectio) belonged to the civil magistrate. When, on account of any defect in the auspice, the validity of a juridical act was challenged, the college of augurs was consulted. Indeed, to avoid such inconveniences, at least toward the end of the republic, the magistrate was made to be assisted by one or more augurs, who in this way assumed functions originally extraneous to their office, which had become under the empire purely honorary.
Cities of Italy and of the provinces had colleges of augurs with office for life, but which was lost upon condemnation. They wore the praetexta toga, sat at the spectacles among the decurions, were exempted, together with their sons, from military service, and had the sole duty of settling doubts in matters of auspice.