Abstract

Cicero, de div. i. 107, has preserved the longest fragment of the Annals: a piece of twenty lines, describing how Romulus and Remus took the auspices to decide which of them should found, give his name to, and rule over the city. Mommsen, Ges. Schr. iv. 1 ff., declared that such auspice-taking was incompatible with Roman augural practice and indeed with the whole nature of augury: the birds could approve or disapprove but not select; selection had to be done by lot. The impossible story, he argued, arose when the twin intruded into the original version which knew of one founder only; the auspices, because they were an integral part of that version, had to be adapted to the two actors. Little is heard of Mommsen's theory now; but it seems to have been contradicted explicitly only by E. Petersen, Klio ix, 42, and since his arguments, such as the finding of the large grape by Attus Navius, are perhaps not decisive, the point must be briefly settled.