AUSPICIO. - From Latin auspicium, from avis bird and spe(i)cio I see. Among the Romans the announcers of the divine will were above all birds (ex avibus): later (Servius, ad Aen., III, 89) divinatory signs were also drawn from quadrupeds that traverse the templum, that is, the space delimited by the augur (ex quadrupedibus); but more from the signs of the sky, lightning, thunderbolts, thunder (ex caelo, ex manubiis Iovis); from baleful omens (ex diris); in war, when haste was necessary, the manner of eating of the chickens was observed (auspicia pullaria, ex tripudiis).
The signs were of two kinds: oblative when they presented themselves of their own accord, interpretative when they were requested by the magistrate and mentally fixed beforehand by the augur. Besides private auspices, which soon fell into disuse, there were public ones. The greater auspices belonged to magistrates invested with imperium and to the censors; the lesser to the others. For validity, the auspices had to be taken in the place where the action began and on the same day, from one midnight to the next (Gellius, II, 2). The magistrate remained in silence (Cicero, De divinatione,
II, 34), seated under a tent open to the south and east (Rose, Journal of Roman Studies, 13 [1923], p. 82 ff.) and having declared the signs he intended to observe, he awaited them motionless. At the end of the republic the observation of the signs became a formality and ended by being omitted altogether. Etruscan haruspicy ended by completely supplanting the auspices.
Bibliography
Alberto Galietti