The Power of Signs. Divination, prediction, and the end of the Roman Republic

在过去的40年里，共和国的罗马宗教一直是非常重要的工作的对象，特别是(尽管不只是)在说英语的学术方面。在主宰政治舞台的独裁势力的压力下，以及希腊文化到来所产生的怀疑主义的压力下，已故共和党宗教衰落的传统模式已被证明是错误的，人们对这一时期的宗教变化和多元化的理解提出了更复杂的解释。现在很明显，宗教在共和后期的罗马和意大利是一个多样化和活跃的现象，在当时的政治层面和社会良知中保持着深刻的重要性。这不仅适用于罗马民众中的非精英阶层，也适用于政治和社会精英，长期以来，他们被认为主要是不抱幻想和愤世嫉俗的。需要一种更微妙的方法，这种方法考虑到情况的复杂性和各种可能的解决方案。英语中没有关于罗马占卜的专著，其他语言的研究要么过时了，要么在许多方面不令人满意。最重要的是，没有关于罗马占卜的全面研究，根据最近的方法论发展来分析它，并试图在罗马共和国晚期的知识生活的更广泛的背景下理解它。关于占卜的批判性讨论、它的潜力和它的职权范围，与关于未来可以在多大程度上被预测和控制的辩论密不可分。简单地说，对“占卜”(占卜)的理解与对“比率”(“理性”)的探索密切相关。在古代著作中，这些概念的发展被最清楚地勾勒出来，这是西塞罗在公元前45至44年间写成的哲学对话，“占卜”(论占卜)。这本书的第一部分提供了对这部作品的全面重新考虑：它的结构，它的预期目标，以及它在公元前一世纪中叶的智力辩论中的地位。对西塞罗论文的讨论将分析引向两个方向：对实践的研究和对概念的研究。这本书的第二部分是对罗马和意大利占卜的主要来源的历史考察：占卜、占卜、西比林书籍、占星术和书记员。第三部分是对占卜和预测概念的研究(特别强调‘审慎’--‘预见’--和‘占卜’--‘占卜’)，这两个概念由西塞罗以非常成功的术语定义，并在当时被其他作者讨论过。占卜和预测之间的关系比人们经常争论的要密切得多。历史因果的概念如何结合到对占卜的思考中，以及历史因果的概念是如何通过占卜的概念和衰落的思想结合在一起的，这提供了一个有趣的视角：因此，人们的注意力转向了文学流派，如认识论、传记和史学，而萨卢斯特和利维的研究是本研究的重要组成部分。当然，对共和国衰落的反思与共和党政权的政治危机有很大关系。奥古斯都着手恢复稳定和秩序，结束了不仅是政治上的，而且是道德上的衰落。奥古斯都时代的文化与预言和占卜问题密切相关(维吉尔的《埃涅阿德》就是一个有趣的案例)。最重要的是，皇帝对占卜在罗马政治和社会中的地位进行了重大的重新定义，将公共和私人的占卜活动置于他的控制和庇护之下。

Roman religion in the Republic has been the object of very important work in the last four decades, especially (though not exclusively) in the English-speaking scholarship. The traditional model of a late Republican religion declining under the pressure of the autocratic forces that dominated the political arena and the scepticism generated by the coming of Greek culture has been proven wrong, and more sophisticated accounts have been suggested for the understanding of religious change and pluralism in this period. It is now clear that religion in late Republican Rome and Italy was a diverse and lively phenomenon, which retained deep importance at the political level and in the social conscience of the time. This is true not just for the non-elite sectors of the Roman populace, but for the political and social elite too, which has long been regarded as mainly disenchanted and cynical. A more nuanced approach is required, one that takes into account the complexity of the picture and the variety of possible solutions. There is no monograph on Roman divination in English, and the studies available in other languages are either outdated or in many respects unsatisfactory. Most importantly, there is no comprehensive study of Roman divination setting out to analyse it in light of recent methodological developments and which tries to understand it within the wider context of the intellectual life in the late Roman Republic. The critical discussion of divination, its potential and its remit, was inextricably intertwined with the debate on the extent to which the future may be predicted and controlled. To put it with a brief formula, the understanding of 'divinatio' ('divination') was closely associated to the exploration of 'ratio' ('reason').The ancient work in which these conceptual developments are outlined most clearly is a philosophical dialogue by Cicero, the 'de divinatione' ('On divination), written between 45 and 44 BC. The first part of the book offers a full reconsideration of this work: its structure, its intended aims, and its place in the intellectual debate of the mid-first century BC. The discussion of Cicero's treatise directs the analysis in two directions: the study of practices, and the study of concepts. The second section of the book is an historical survey of the main sources of divination in Rome and Italy: augury, haruspicy, the Sibylline Books, astrology, and cleromancy. The third part is a study of the concepts of divination and prediction (with special emphasis on 'prudentia' - 'foresight' - and 'divinatio' - 'divination'), which were defined in very successful terms by Cicero and were discussed by other authors at the time. Divination and prediction were much more closely related than it has often been argued. An interesting vantage point is provided by how the concept of historical causation is combined to the reflection on divination, and with that of historical causation is combined by that of divination, and with that of the ideas of decline: attention is therefore turned to literary genres like epistolography, biography, and historiography, and the study of Sallust and Livy is an important part of this investigation. The reflection on the decline of the Republic has much to do, of course, with the political crisis of the Republican regime. Augustus set out to restore stability and order, and an end to a decline which was not just political, but also moral. The culture of the Augustan age is deeply concerned with issues of prediction and divination (Virgil's 'Aeneid' is an interesting case study). Most importantly, the emperor undertook a major redefinition of the place of divination in Roman politics and society, which put public and private divinatory practices under his control and patronage.