The templum: the sacred space traced in the sky by the augurs

To us a temple is a building. For the Romans the word templum originally meant something different: a space bounded by ritual words and gestures, within which the augur observed the signs of the gods. It could be in the sky, on the ground or in a built place. Only later did the term come to denote the sacred building that stood in a space consecrated in this way.

Sky, earth and underworld

Varro, in De lingua Latina, distinguishes three kinds of templum: that of the sky, that of the earth and that below the earth. The heavenly templum was the portion of the firmament that the augur marked out with his gaze and with the lituus. The earthly one was the place from which he observed, enclosed by precise boundaries. Varro also preserves an ancient formula by which the augur fixed the limits, naming trees or other landmarks visible on the horizon.

The etymology of the word is debated. Many scholars connect it with a root meaning to cut, the same one found in the Greek temenos, the sacred enclosure: the templum would thus be a space cut out from the rest of the world. What is certain is that the verb contemplari derives from templum; it originally meant the act of carefully observing the consecrated space.

Orientation

The most detailed account of the taking of auspices is found in the first book of Livy, in connection with the inauguration of Numa as king. The augur led Numa to the citadel, seated him on a stone and placed himself on his left, with his head veiled and the lituus in his hand. He then marked out the regions of the sky from east to west, calling the parts towards the south right and those towards the north left.

Then he fixed his eyes on a distant point, as far as his sight could reach, and prayed to Jupiter to show clear signs within the limits he had drawn. When the signs came, Numa was declared king. In Roman augury signs coming from the left were normally considered favourable, the opposite of what happened among the Greeks, who preferred the right. Cicero discusses this difference in the second book of De divinatione.

Built temples and inaugurated places

On the citadel of the Capitol, the Arx, there was a permanent place for observation, called the auguraculum. But the concept of templum extended to many public spaces. The curia in which the Senate met had to be an inaugurated place, because decisions taken elsewhere would have had no validity. The Rostra, the speakers' platform in the Forum, were also considered a templum.

Not every sacred building, moreover, was a templum in the technical sense. The shrine of Vesta, for example, had according to ancient sources not been inaugurated and was therefore not a templum, even though it was one of the holiest places in Rome. The distinction shows that the term had a precise legal and ritual meaning, tied to the augural act rather than to the religious function of the building.

The templum is perhaps the concept that best reveals the augural mentality. For the Romans the world was not a neutral space: it had to be ordered, divided and made legible before it could receive the word of the gods. When we enter an ancient temple today, we are in fact entering a place born from this gesture of bounding the gaze.