This thesis examines the relationship between human will and divine will as mediated through state divination in the Roman Middle and Late Republic. The nature of ancient evidence for incidents involving state divination, and for divinatory ‘rules’, is scrutinized: the historicity of many divinatory incidents recorded in Roman tradition is defended, and the existence of a body of basic divinatory ‘rules’ posited. Current models of the relationship between human and divine will in Roman divination are examined; the thesis challenges the ‘alignment’ model wherein the outcomes of state divination are assumed routinely to have aligned with the will of their recipients. Cases where divinatory outcomes do not appear to have aligned with recipients’ will are identified in Cicero, Livy, and Cassius Dio. The modern view that state divinatory techniques (auspication, haruspicy in sacrifice, and prodigy-interpretation) routinely generated desired results is called into question. The thesis then re-evaluates the canon of ancient ‘rule-statements’ generally cited as evidence for augural ‘principles’ that the report of a sign was considered as valid as an actual sign, and that it was acceptable for individuals to fabricate or to reject signs at will. Instead, it is suggested that a real sign was preferable to a reported one, and that the validity of an oblative sign depended on the individual’s awareness of it. Finally, the thesis proposes an alternative to the currently-accepted understanding of the auspicial procedure ‘servare de caelo’, arguing that even this procedure need not be seen as invariably generating signs in alignment with human will and as countenancing sign-falsification. These conclusions are held to encourage a re-consideration of the modern understanding of the nature of Roman state divination and of Roman religion.

<p>The role of realism in the depiction of animals in Greaco-Roman fable is investigated. The crow and the raven have been chosen as the prism through which the investigation is carried out. Fable will be shown to be a genre founded on a contextually realistic depiction of animals, and this may especially be seen in the corvid fables. Realism must, however, be understood contextually, as what constitutes a realistic depiction of crows and ravens in Graeco-Roman times is quite different than what one would encounter at present. As a result of which the crow and raven are marked by attributes ranging from cleverness, parenting ability, resistance to weather, vocal mimicry, longevity, and augural significance, amongst a host of other characteristics which sometimes coincide with modern views but often do not. Thus Graeco-Roman fables dealing with crows and ravens can be broadly divided into two categories: fables dealing in various ways with their intelligence, and fables dealing with their augural significance.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

Divination is a trope Cormac McCarthy employs time and again in his work. Augury, haruspicy, cartomancy, voodoo, sortition and oneiromancy all take their places in the texts, overtly or otherwise, as well as divination by bloodshed (a practice so ubiquitous as to have no formal name). But mantic practices which aim at an understanding of the divine mind prove problematic in a universe that often appears godless—or worse. My thesis uses divination as the starting point for a close reading of each of McCarthy’s novels. Research into Babylonian, Greek, Roman and African soothsaying practices is included, as well as the insights of a number of McCarthy scholars. But the work of extra-­‐literary scholars—philologists, Jungian psychologists, cultural anthropologists and religious historians whose works explore the origins of human violence and the spiritual impulse—is also invoked to shed light on McCarthy’s evolving perspective.