This chapter explores what Romans thought they were doing through sacrifice, and what this can tell us about Roman conceptions of the relationship between gods and human beings. The chapter focuses on those animal sacrifices that Romans believed had been unsuccessful in that they had failed to please the gods. The chapter queries the current consensus that Roman divinatory sacrifices generally proceeded until a favourable sign was obtained (usque ad litationem). It is argued that Roman magistrates took signs from failed sacrifices more seriously than we have often thought, and that this behaviour can be read as evidence that they were anxious about their relationship with their gods.

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This book proposes a new way of understanding augury, a form of Roman state divination designed to consult the god Jupiter. Previous scholarly studies of augury have tended to focus either upon its legal-constitutional aspects or upon its role in maintaining and perpetuating Roman social and political structures. This book contributes to the study of Roman religion, theology, politics, and cultural history by focusing upon what augury can tell us about how Romans understood their relationship with their gods. The current scholarly consensus holds that augury, like other forms of Roman public divination, told Romans what they wanted to hear. Modern scholars speak of augury as a way of gaining control over the gods, of priests and magistrates as ‘creating’ the divine will regardless of the empirical results of augural rituals, and of Jupiter as being ‘bound’ to actualize whatever signs human beings chose to report. This book challenges this consensus, arguing that augury in both theory and practice left space for perceived expressions of divine will which contradicted human wishes. When human and divine will clashed, it was the will of Jupiter, not that of the man consulting him, which was supposed to prevail. In theory as in practice, it was the Romans, not their supreme god, who were ‘bound’ by the auguries and auspices.

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