Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/326

 has been said to show that the science of divining from the encounters of the road is still flourishing.

The observation of birds is in many cases closely allied with the last method of divination; for naturally the peasant as he goes on his way is as quick to notice the birds as any other object which he encounters. But since auspices may also be taken under other conditions, it will be well to observe the old line of demarcation, and to treat this branch of augury, as it was treated in ancient handbooks, separately. Moreover the attitude of the modern folk towards these two branches of divination justifies the division. The superstitions which I have just recorded are somewhat blindly and unintelligently held; but in the taking of auspices proper the ordinances of ancient lore which the people follow are felt by them to be doubly sanctioned—by reason as well as by antiquity; they apprehend the theory on which their practice is based—the idea that birds are better suited than any other animate thing, by virtue both of their rapid flight and of their keen and extended vision, to be the messengers between gods and men.

In practice this branch of divination is still concerned chiefly with the large and predatory birds to which alone was originally applied the term [Greek: oiônos]. 'The largest, the strongest, the most intelligent, and at the same time those whose solitary habits gave them more individual character,' says a French writer, 'were deliberately preferred by the diviners of antiquity as the subjects of their observation. For these and these only was reserved at first the name [Greek: oiônos], "solitary bird ," or bird of presage'; and he goes on to suggest that the Oriental belief in the magical power of blood to revivify the souls of the dead and to stimulate prophecy influenced the selection for a prophetic rôle of carnivorous birds such as might indeed often feed on the entrails of those very victims from which sacrificial omens were taken. But the reasons assigned by Plutarch for the pre-eminence of birds among all other things as the messengers of heaven apply with so special a force to the special class of birds selected, that it seems unnecessary to search out reasons more abstruse.

'Birds,' he says, 'by their quickness and intelligence and their.], as [Greek: huiônos] from [Greek: huios], [Greek: koinônos] from [Greek: koinos].]