The college of augurs and the lituus, the curved staff of the auspices
Who the augurs of Rome were, how many there were, how they were chosen and why the lituus, a curved staff without knots, became the emblem of their art.
If haruspicy was a knowledge that came from Etruria, augury was regarded as a Roman tradition from the very beginning. The augurs formed one of the great priestly colleges of the city, alongside the pontiffs. Their task was not to predict the future but to establish whether the gods approved of an action about to be undertaken: the founding of a temple, the election of a magistrate, the start of a battle.
An ancient and prestigious college
Tradition traced the augurs back to Romulus or Numa. In the republican period their number grew gradually. In 300 BC the lex Ogulnia, recorded by Livy, raised the college to nine members and opened the office to plebeians, who until then had been excluded. Sulla increased the number to fifteen and Caesar to sixteen. The office was held for life and brought great prestige to those who held it.
For a long time new members were chosen by co-optation, that is, by the augurs themselves. In 104 BC the lex Domitia introduced a form of popular election, later abolished by Sulla and restored in 63 BC. Among the most famous augurs was Cicero, who joined the college in 53 BC, and, in the imperial age, Pliny the Younger, who in one of his letters openly expresses his joy at the appointment.
The lituus
The emblem of the augurs was the lituus, a staff whose upper end curled into a spiral. Livy, describing the consecration of King Numa, calls it “baculum sine nodo aduncum”, a curved staff without knots. With it the augur marked out in the sky and on the ground the lines that bounded the space of observation. The same name also referred to a military trumpet of similar shape, used by the Romans and the Etruscans.
Cicero relates that the lituus of Romulus was kept in the meeting house of the Salii on the Palatine. When the Gauls set Rome on fire, at the beginning of the fourth century BC, the building burned, but the staff was found intact among the ashes. The event was interpreted as a sign of Rome's continuity. The lituus often appears on republican and imperial coins, beside the names of magistrates who were also members of the college.
What an augur did
The augurs did not personally take the auspices on behalf of the state: that right belonged to the magistrates. The college instead guarded the doctrine, kept the augural books and commentaries and gave opinions when doubts arose. If the augurs declared that an election or a law was flawed by a ritual error, the Senate could annul it. It was a considerable power, which made the office coveted for political reasons as well.
An important ceremony was inauguration: certain places and certain priests, such as the flamen of Jupiter, had to be inaugurated, that is, consecrated after favourable signs had been obtained. The college was also responsible for the ancient augurium salutis, which could be celebrated only in time of peace to ask for the welfare of the people and which Augustus revived after the end of the civil wars.
The college of augurs survived the end of the Republic and kept its prestige throughout the imperial age. The emperors were members of it, and according to Suetonius the very name of Augustus evoked the idea of a favourable augury. The lituus, meanwhile, had a long afterlife in the imagination: many have seen in it an ancestor of the curved crozier of bishops, although the link is more symbolic than proven.