auspice

Ancient religious practice

EntityQ779777

Also known as auspicium · auspicia

Subclass of: divination

Overview

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Augury was the Roman religious practice of observing the behavior of birds to receive omens. When the individual, known as the augur, read these signs, it was referred to as "taking the auspices". "Auspex” means "one who divines by looking at birds". Depending upon the birds, the auspices from the gods could be favorable or unfavorable. Sometimes politically motivated augurs would fabricate unfavorable auspices in order to delay certain state functions, such as elections. Pliny the Elder attributes the invention of auspicy to Tiresias the seer of Thebes.

Overview

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11 identifiers linking auspice across the web's reference databases

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Source last edited November 1, 2026. AIDb refreshes this page daily.

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AIDb. (2026). auspice (Q779777). Retrieved from https://aidb.si/e/auspice-Q779777