AUSPICIO. — From Latin *auspicium*, from *avis* (bird) and *specio* (I see). Among the Romans, the announcers of the divine will were chiefly birds (*ex avibus*): later (Servius, *ad Aen.*, III, 89) divinatory signs were also taken from quadrupeds crossing the *tempus*, i.e., the space delimited by the augur (*ex quadrupedibus*), but more frequently from celestial signs—lightning, thunderbolts, thunder (*ex caelo, ex manubiis Iovis*); from inauspicious omens (*ex diris*); in war, when speed was necessary, the manner in which chickens ate was observed (*auspicia pullaria, ex tripudiis*).
The signs were of two kinds: *oblativi* when they presented themselves spontaneously, and *interpretativi* when they were sought by the magistrate and mentally predetermined by the augur. Besides private *auspicia*, which soon fell into disuse, there were public ones. The major *auspicia* belonged to magistrates invested with *imperium* and to the censors; the minor ones to others. For validity, the *auspicia* 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 silent (Cicero, *De divin.*, II, 34), seated under an open tent facing south and east (Rose, *Journal of Roman Studies*, 13 [1923], pp. 82 ff.), and having declared the signs he intended to observe, he awaited them motionless. By the end of the Republic, the observation of signs became a mere formality and eventually was entirely omitted. Etruscan *arcuspicina* ultimately supplanted the *auspicia* altogether.