The ancient Roman practice of augury, the reading of divine messages in the flight patterns and behavior of birds, strikes modern minds as quaint superstition. But for the Romans, what a person saw on a particular morning could literally determine the course of their entire year. The practice was not folklore or fringe belief. It was embedded in the highest levels of Roman government, military planning, and public life, and understanding how it worked reveals something profound about the relationship between observation, belief, and political power in the ancient world. Augury was a formal state institution with its own college of priests, the augurs, who held lifetime appointments and wielded enormous political influence. Before any major public action could be taken, whether declaring war, holding elections, or founding a new colony, an augur had ...