octavian and the omen of the "gallina alba"

Octavian and the Omen of the "Gallina Alba"Author(s): Marleen B. FlorySource: The Classical Journal, Vol. 84, No. 4 (Apr. - May, 1989), pp. 343-356Published by: The Classical Association of the Middle West and SouthStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3297696 .

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OCTAVIAN AND THE OMEN OF THE GALLINA ALBA

Pliny (NAT. 15.136-37; cf. 15.130), Suetonius (Gal. 1), and Cassius Dio (48.52.3-4; cf. 63.29.3) report that an omen occurred at the time of Livia's marriage to Octavian: an eagle carrying a white hen with a sprig of laurel in her beak dropped the bird unharmed into Livia's lap. In Pliny's version the haruspices advised the preservation and maintenance of the hen and any offspring and the nurture of the laurel as a religious obligation: "conservari alitem et subolem iussere haruspices ramumque eum seri ac rite custodiri" (15.136). The hen, in confirmation of a prodigy, produced an extraordinary number of chicks ("tanta pullorum suboles provenit," Suet. Gal. 1) while the laurel sprig burgeoned into a grove ("tale vero lauretum," Suet. Gal. 1; "mireque silva provenit," Plin. NAT. 15.137). Not only the memory of the omen lived on but also its tangible evidence, the flock and the laurel grove. At a villa near the ninth milestone of the Via Flaminia ("iuxta nonum lapidem Flaminiae viae," Plin. NAT. 15.137),' which marked the spot of the miraculum (Plin. NAT. 15.136),2 the original laurel and bushes propagated from it as well as the descendants of the gallina alba survived, according to the legend, more than a century, perishing simultaneously with Nero, the last of the race they represented (Suet, Gal. 1; Cass. Dio 63.29.3).3

Scholars briefly note this story as an example of how Octavian appropriated the laurel as a personal symbol during the triumviral period in order to imitate Julius Caesar and to surround himself with divinely given omina imperii. No scholar, however, has fully analyzed the significance of the hen and brood of

'The villa is commonly referred to as Livia's on the basis of this omen alone. See Suet., Gal. 1. Archaeologists tend to date the villa between 30 and 25 B.C. or "possibly as early as 38 B.C.": M. M. Gabriel, Livia's Garden Room at Prima Porta (N.Y. 1955) 2-3, with full citations of the evidence. History of the villa and reports on the 1982 excavations in C. Calci and G. Messineo, La Villa di Livia a Prima Porta (Rome 1984).

2For other examples of the marking of the place of a miraculum see Phn., NAT. 7.121; Livy 1.36.5.

3Pliny's version speaks of the grove as if still extant ("et durant silvae nominibus suis discretae," NAT. 15.137). He is borrowing from an earlier source, possibly Masurius Sabinus, a jurist and compilator who wrote during Tiberius' rule, mentioned by Pliny as an authority on botany in two prior chapters (15.126, 135). See E Mtinzer, Beitriige zur Quellenkritik der Naturgeschichte des Plinius, (Berlin 1897) 121 and n. 1. There are some differences in the three accounts. Pliny's version emphasizes the laurel (his subject in chapters 127-38) and consultation with the priests, and plays down Livia's role, representing the laurel as a gift to Augustus (130). Both Suetonius and Cassius Dio represent Livia as responsible for the preservation of the laurel and hen. Cassius Dio may have had another tradition before him, as he gives an interpretation of the omen which is hostile to Livia. More on this in my text. All three describe the custom of using the laurel in the triumphs celebrated by Augustus' descendants. A late source, Aur. Vic., Lib. de Caes. 5.17, closely based on Suetonius, adds nothing new. Perhaps related to the omen is the story of the rooster that symbolized Tiberius and was "hatched" by Livia (Plin., NAT. 10.154; Suet., Tib. 14.2).

343



344 MARLEEN B. FLORY

chicks or the connections of the myth with both triumviral politics and Au- gustan family propaganda. The purpose of this article is to describe the political reasons for the omen, its psychological value to Octavian in shaping public opinion, and, finally, to connect the omen with a famous passage in the Aeneid.

Toward the end of 49 B.C. Julius Caesar left Rome for Brundisium, from where he soon was to sail to Greece and his final campaign against Pompey. As he was making preparations in the forum in Rome, a kite dropped a sprig of laurel on one of the men with him: iKiztvo; v &vTf dyopoP Kxviov 8(6tpvlT ;vi t6bv oujprtap6vzov of ~t~pptWy (Cass. Dio 41.39.2). This prediction of success-the laurel of military victory sent by Jupiter--inspired Octavian to imitation a decade later. Pliny and Suetonius date the omen by Octavian's betrothal and marriage to Livia, that is, in late 39 or early 38.4 Cassius Dio puts it among a series of disquieting public omens in 37. During this period Octavian went to war with Sextus Pompey, and the omen clearly recalls the omen of 49 and suggests a comparison: just as Julius Caesar conquered Pompey, so the son of divus lulius would win a similarly conclusive victory over Pompey's son. The struggle with Pompey had brought interruptions in the food supply and had made Octavian unpopular. The numerous omens of this period before the naval conflicts between Octavian and Pompey near Sicily reflect public uneasiness and hostility, to which Octavian's omen was well- timed counterpropaganda.

Caesar had taken the laurel as his personal symbol and prerogative. A senatorial decree of 45, for example, gave him the right to wear the laurel wreath deti Kli nivtctVcZo0 (Cass. Dio 43.43.1; cf. Suet. Jul. 45.2), just as the permanent laurel decoration on the fasces carried by his lictors (Cass. Dio 44.4.3) symbolized his perpetual right to triumph. Omens, for instance, the crackling of the laurel in the fire on the day of Caesar's birth (Sid. Apoll., Carm. 2.120) or its appearance in the mouth of a regaliolus in flight from pursuers (Suet., Jul. 81.3) on the day before Caesar's death, added a supernatural aura to honors voted by the Senate and the people. Thus Caesar was

4The date of the marriage of Livia and Octavian is given by the Fasti Verulani (A. Degrassi, Inscr. Ital. 13.2, 160-61) as January 17 and the year--38 B.C. -by Cassius Dio (48.44). Literary evidence (e.g., Tac., Ann. 5.1.2; Veil. Pat. 2.95.1; Cass. Dio 48.44; Suet. Aug. 62.2; Tib. 4.3; Cl. 1) makes clear that she was pregnant (six months: Cass. Dio 48.44) at the time of the marriage. Suetonius (Cl. 11.) tells us that Claudius' father Drusus and Antony had the same birthday. The Fasti Verulani (Degrassi, Inscr. Ital. 13.2, 158-59) give us the birthdate of Antony on Jan. 14, hence Drusus was born on January 14, i.e., three days before the date of the marriage in the official calendar. Attempts to reconcile the inconsistencies (J. Carcopino, Passion et politique chez les Cisars [Paris 1958] 65-82; W. Suerbaum, "Merkwiirdige Geburtstage," Chi- ron 10 [1980] 327-55) rest on distinguishing a betrothal when Livia was six months pregnant from the marriage itself, three days after the birth of Livia's son. We must virtually ignore all the quite detailed and consistent written evidence to accept this solution, and, in my opinion the problem remains unsolved. The omen may not have been published contemporaneously with the marriage, but later, perhaps, as Cassius Dio writes, in 37, since Livia's trip to Veii while pregnant or shortly after Drusus' birth seems improbable.



OMEN OF THE GALLINA ALBA 345

careful to establish a double right to the laurel by divine will and public decree.5 His adopted son followed his lead.6

But the laurel sprig, "which was sent to him from heaven" ("[laurus] quae ei missa e caelo est," Plin. NAT. 15.130) was different from the laurel that had fallen to Caesar in the forum even if, like that token, it buttressed Octavian's claim to the laurel as his personal attribute. The laurel sprig was not merely a symbol of Octavian's inheritance of the military prowess of his deified father and of Jupiter's favor, it was the life-force of Caesar himself. When Augustus and the members of his family celebrated their triumphs, they replanted the branch which they had cut, which took root again, and marked out the individual bushes with their own names: "fuitque mos triumphantibus alias con- festim eodem loco pangere" (Suet. Gal. 1); "traditusque mos est ramos quos tenuerunt serendi et durant silvae nominibus suis discretae" (Plin. NAT. 15.137).7 These bushes withered and died at the time of the death of each emperor (Suet. Gal. 1). Thus the grove formed a living family genealogy of the triumphatores of the gens lulia. The ability of the cut branch to take root again and grow, which is characteristic of some types of laurel (Plin., NAT. 17.62), suggested the perpetual rebirth of Julius Caesar through his family line. The idea of the life of a man or a group represented by the life of a plant or a tree was common in Roman folklore. Such stories clustered around the city of Rome herself and her kings and heroes.8 Octavian, by endowing the

5Evidence about Caesar's use of the laurel in S. Weinstock, Divus lulius (Oxford 1971) 19-22, 97, 107, 328.

6In 40 B.C. Octavian was voted the right to wear laurel for the victories of his legates (Cass. Dio 48.16.1), and in 36 B.C. the right to wear the laurel crown on all occasions (Cass. Dio 49.15.1), in 29 B.C. the right to wear the triumphal crown at all festivals (Cass. Dio 51.20.2), in 25 B.C. the right to wear a crown and triumphal garb on Jan. 1 (Cass. Dio 53.26.5). It is the subject of controversy if the decree of 29 was a laurel or gold crown, since the laurel crown had been voted in 36. See, for a history of this controversy, T. H6lscher, Victoria Romana (Mainz 1967) 158-59, esp. n. 1007, who argues that the decree of 29 was a laurel crown, that of 25 a crown of gold. See, for further discussion, K. Kraft, "Der goldene Kranz und der Kampf um die Entlarvung des 'Tyrannen,' " Jahrbuch fuir Numismatik und Geldgeschichte 3/4 (1952-1953) 7-94. In Res Gest. 4.1 Augustus writes "l[aurum de] fascibus deposui in Capi[tolio votis quae] quoque bello nuncupaveram [sol]utis." The fasces laureati were a symbol of victory. K. Latte, Romische Religionsgeschichte (Munich 1967) 297, esp. n. 4, argues this action was an Augustan innovation, but Th. Mommsen (Res Gestae [Berlin 18832] 20) that it was traditional. A. von Premerstein (Vom Werden und Wesen des Prinzipats [Munich 1937] 254) suggests the gesture was a rejection of Caesar's use of laurel as a permanent decoration on his fasces as "zu an- spruchsvoll." His suggestion makes sense. The important role of the laurel bushes in 27 B.C. gave new legitimacy to these acts of the triumviral period.

7Suetonius does not specify, as does Pliny, that the same branch was replanted, although he notes the need for an immediate substitution for the branch which had been removed. The myth is hardly consistent since a great grove still remained at Nero's death even though the bushes identified with the previous emperors had presumably died.

80n trees symbolizing the life of men, J. G. Frazer, ed., Ovid, Fasti, (London 1929) vol. 2, 401-5. See also F B. Krauss, An Interpretation of the Omens, Portents, and Prodigies Recorded by Livv, Tacitus, and Suetonius (diss. Phil. 1930) 133-38. See too the story of Polydorus, Virg., Aen. 3.19-46 with parallel examples and discussion by R. D. Williams, ed., Aeneid, Book 3 (Oxford 1962) 57-58. On the trees of Romulus and their symbolism, D. Briquel, "Trois etudes sur Romulus," in Recherches sur les religions de I'antiquiti classique, ed. by R. Bloch (Geneva 1980) 267-319, and, specifically on the cornel tree, J. Bayet, "Le rite du f6cial et le cornouiller magique," in Croyances et rites dans la Rome antique (Paris 1971) 9-43.




laurel branch with divine life, looked back beyond Julius Caesar's model to the tales associated with Romulus, a figure much in his mind around the time he celebrated his triumph in 29 B.C., and with whose name was associated the famous ficus ruminalis and a cornel tree on the Palatine. As these trees, still extant, marked important events in the life of Romulus--his legendary birth and foundation of the city-Octavian planted the laurel grove, a visible and permanent symbol of his choice by Jupiter.

According to Pliny (NAT. 15.137), Octavian began a family tradition of taking laurel from the grove to carry in his hand and to wreathe his head in the triumphal parade: "silva provenit, ex ea triumphans postea Caesar laurum in manu tenuit coronamque capite gessit, ac deinde imperatores Caesares cuncti."9 Suetonius (Gal. 1) writes that the emperors who followed Augustus picked the laurel there themselves before their triumphs: "tale vero lauretum ut triumphaturi Caesares inde laureas decerperent" (cf. Cass. Dio 48.52.4). The Caesares are, of course, exclusively the descendants of Augustus, for at Nero's death "the whole wood dried up and died" (Suet. Gal. 1). The custom, however, may not have ended with the Julio-Claudians, for Donatus talks of a similar custom connected with laurels on the Palatine: "nata erat laurus in Palatio eo die quo Augustus: unde triumphantes coronari consueverant" (Serv., Aen. 6.230). Donatus may be conflating two stories-a birth omen of laurel for Augustus in imitation of Caesar and the story of the grove on the Via Flaminia-but perhaps he speaks of an actual practice. Just as Augustus and his Julio-Claudian successors picked their laurel in a grove associated with their family's founder, later emperors considered Augustus as the founder of the city and empire over which they ruled. So they took their laurel from a hill associated with his house and the center of imperial power not only to empha- size their continuity with the first Roman emperor but their monopoly on the laurel. When power shifted from Augustus' heirs to other men, the Palatine

9There is nothing in this statement to support the claim that Augustus first established the custom of using both the laurel branch and wreath together. See, e.g., E. Simon, Die Port- landvase (Mainz 1957) 38; Steier, "Lorbeer," RE 13, 1441. The laurel crown was, of course, a

regular feature of the triumph and victory and was voted by the Senate (Cic., Pis. 58), but coins also show a triumphator with a branch in his hand. Numismatic experts regularly regard this as a laurel branch because of the context. See, for examples of it, M. Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage (Cambridge 1974) vol. 1, 307, no. 293.1; 328, no. 326.1; 506, no. 494.24 (laureate head of Caesar with laurel branch behind); H. Castritius, "Zum Aureus mit dem Triumph des Pom-

peius," Jahrbuch fiir Numismatik und Geldgeschichte 21 (1971) 25-35. Simon is right that the form now undoubtedly became fixed for Augustus' successors, but it is not likely that Pliny would have remarked on the bough and crown as a notable innovation; rather, in my opinion, he is, as would be appropriate in a treatise on laurel, distinguishing the type of laurel Augustus wore on his head and carried from the type of laurel used elsewhere in the celebration (on the fasces, on the

quadriga, by the soldiers, etc.). Pliny refers to change in the type of laurels used in the triumph at NAT. 15.137 ("fortassis ideo mutatis triumphalibus") but, perhaps since he did not collate his sources, his account is garbled (cf. 15.130) as he refers to two different types of laurel (one with berries, the other without) used by Augustus. Perhaps the laurel of the omen-"onustum suls bacis" (cf Cass. Dio 48.52.3:

•ihoviov 6d(pvl;q yKr•pltou)- is the laurel used for the crown and branch while the laurel without berries ("sterilem vero earum [bacarum] triumphalem eaque dicunt triumphantes uti," Plin. NAT. 15.130) was the laurel used for other aspects of the triumph. It seems obvious that some difference between the laurel used by Augustus and his men was

appropriate.




became a more suitable place for the laurel. The abrupt end of the grove on the Via Flaminia suggests an understandable disinterest of emperors after Nero in continuing a family myth which only underscored their own lack of connection with the blood line of Augustus. Suetonius tells us about the omen of the hen and laurel at the beginning of the life of Galba, emphasizing the tremen- dous pyschological impact of the end of Augustus' line on the Romans. Then he goes on to describe how Galba--"nullo gradu contingens Caesarum domum"-set up his own family stemma in the atrium of the palace and claimed he was the descendant of Jupiter and Pasipha?, daughter of the Sun (Gal. 2). He created, in other words, a divine family line to rival that of his predecessors.

When Octavian decided to use laurel from the grove for his triumph of 29, he showed his interest not only in recalling an omen of a decade earlier but also in making new and further use of it in family propaganda. He could not have chosen a more dramatic way to revive the story than to encourage the Romans to believe that the laurel he wore and carried was plucked from the plant he had received from heaven. Octavian's spectacular triple triumph of August 13, 14, and 15, recalled the triumph of Julius Caesar in 46 and also celebrated the special success of the gens lulia. The dedication of the Curia lulia, the temple of Divus lulius, and the celebration of the lusus Troiae paid homage not only to Julius Caesar but to the divine origin of the family line.' The laurel was the traditional attribute of the Republican triumphator, but by laying claim to and displaying a laurel of divine origin, Octavian proclaimed the special relationship of his gens to the gods.

On August 18 Octavian dedicated the temple of Divus lulius in the Roman forum, a building whose purpose was not merely to establish Octavian's pietas in punishing his father's murderers but to create a visible monument in the heart of Roman political life to Caesar's dynastic line." Octavian's ties to the deified Caesar in turn intimated his own future claim to godhead. In 1957 Andreae published reports of the recent excavations carried out in this area of the forum and reported the discovery by Gamberini Montgenet of planters sunk in the ground at regular intervals around the temple foundations. Ex- cavators discovered in some of them the roots of the laurus nobilis.2" Gros has

I'There is a number of similarities between the two celebrations, including the dedication of monuments associated with the Julian name, the lusus Troiae, the significant role played by an Egyptian queen, and even, apparently, the introduction of animals unseen by the Romans before. See Cass. Dio 43.19-23 and 51.21.5-22. A. Alf6ldi thought Octavian also had, in his celebration of a triplex triumphus, Romulus in mind. See "Die Geburt der kaiserlichen Bildsymbolik," MH 11 (1954) 136, n. 13; further discussion by G. Binder, Aeneas und Augustus: Interpretationen zum 8.Buch der Aeneis (Meisenheim am Glan 1971) 165-66.

"On its propaganda significance, P. Zanker, Forum Romanum: Die Neugestaltung durch Augustus (Tuibingen 1972) 12-13. Also, with historical and architectural history, M. Montagna Pasquinucci, La decorazione architettonica del tempio del Divo Giulio nel Foro Romano (Rome 1973); see too by the same author "L'altare del tempio del Divo Giulio," Athenaeum n.s. 52 (1974) 144-55 on the closing off of the altar connected with the temple at a later period, probably by Augustus to remove a visible symbol of Caesar's dictatorship.

'2B. Andreae, "Archiologische Funde und Grabungen im Bereich der Soprintendenzen von Rom 1949-1956/57," AA 1957, 165-66.




compared this planting to that of the funerary gardens of heroa and suggested that the temple was a family shrine transported into a public context.'3 Yet the laurel was also symbolic. The appropriate plant with which to surround the temple of a god was the plant ordinarily associated with that divinity in cult and worship, for instance, myrtle for Venus. The laurel planted here implied that the plant now belonged to Julius Caesar and his family line.'14

Much has been written about the grant, two years later, of two laurel bushes to Augustus to be planted next to the doors of his house on the Palatine.'5 This vote by the Senate and the people made Augustus' house comparable to the Regia, the Curiae Veteres, the houses of the flamines, and the temple of the Vestals, but although the symbolism was religious, its inspiration was contemporary and political. The bushes recalled two similar bushes planted in front of the Regia, the seat of the Pontifex Maximus, an office from which Augustus had excluded himself by his refusal to oust Lepidus. The bushes made the point that his house was equivalent in status. As Alfoldi has shown, the bushes rapidly became an important symbol on coins, altars, and other art of the period, and their implications grew to include a great variety of ideas associated with the reign of Augustus: peace, eternity, joyful festivity, the favor of

13Aurea Templa: Recherches sur l'architecture religieuse de Rome a l'dpoque d'Auguste (Rome 1976) 90-91. As Gros points out, the only other plants in the Forum were the legendary ficus ruminalis and the sacred fig, vine, and olive "in medio foro." While laurel was a regular decorative plant, the context suggests that propaganda and not aesthetics dictated the planting. It is interesting to note that Aeneas' tomb at Lavinium had a regular planting of trees that caught Dionysius of Halicarnassus' attention: Eozt & XCodTtcov or3

0Aya KCai 7tpi alwT6 6v6pa azoXtr16ov alt•pqUKOta 4tag itta (1.64.5).

14The identification of the laurel with the gens lulia can be strikingly demonstrated by cameo portraits of laurel-wreathed Augustae, e.g., Livia and Agrippina, who wear the wreath as a symbol of family membership in art meant for private circulation only. The wreath would not have been appropriate in public art in the early Empire because of its traditional associations from the Republican period. One possible example from this period of a public context in provincial art is in K. Erim, "RWcentes decouvertes A Aphrodisias en Carie, 1979-1980," RA (1982) 163-69, fig. 6, but the figure could be either a Julio-Claudian princess or a symbolic figure. The relief has not yet been thoroughly analyzed and published. A coin with a laureate Livia and Tiberius without a laurel wreath from Thessalonike can only be an engraving error as W. H. Gross, lulia Augusta (G6ttingen 1962) 64, points out. One illuminating example of the meaning of the laurel wreath for an Augusta in a cameo portrait is the Marlborough gem now in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The gem shows Livia as Venus Genetrix holding a portrait bust of the deified Augustus, whose face also bears a resemblance to Tiberius. Livia wears a laurel wreath appropriate to her adoption into the gens Iulia and as the priestess of her deified husband and, moreover, as the mother of a son now adopted, like herself, into the Julian line. Venus Genetrix wears the laurel as the founder of the family line. The most recent publication, but without discussion of the laurel, is by P. Winkes, "Der Kameo Marlborough. Ein Urbild der Livia," AA 97 (1982) 131-38, who dates the cameo to shortly after Augustus' death.

15The major work is by A. Alfoldi, Die zwei Lorbeerbaiume des Augustus (Bonn 1973), who corrects Mommsen's assertion, based on Cassius Dio (53.16.4), that the laurels on the Palatine were essentially a symbol of military victory (6-7) and explains their evolution and especially religious implications. See too E B6mer (Heidelberg 1958) on Ovid, Fasti 3.137-42, who comments on the controversy about bushes vs. branches. For the debate see W. K. Lacey, "Laurel Bushes," LCM (1981), 113; E Williams, "Laurel Boughs," LCM (1981) 209-12; W. K. Lacey, "Laurel Bushes Again-Res Gestae 34.2," LCM (1982) 118.




Apollo, as well, of course, as military victory.'16 The story of the omen did not fade and die but continued to complement the grant of laurel by the Senate and people. What the Romans voted, the gods had already given. Augustus rested his position not only on precedent and tradition but on divine favor.

A denarius struck in Rome in 29 confirms the publicity given to the story by Octavian. The reverse shows Octavian laureate and- holding a laurel branch in his right hand. He rides in an elaborately decorated quadriga, whose reins he holds and underneath which appears the legend IMP(erator) CAESAR. On the obverse we see a Victory holding a palm branch in her left hand and a laurel crown in her right and standing on the prow of a ship. The allusions to Actium and the celebration of 29 are obvious. Commentators have called Octavian's branch olive or left it unidentified, but Pliny's statement that Augustus wore and carried laurel from the grove on the Via Flaminia makes clear that we have, as it were, a virtual photograph of Octavian as he appeared in the parade of 29 with the laurel crown and branch from the family grove."7

The hen, like the laurel, was also miraculous and completed the symbolism of the laurel. Columella, in his treatise on farming, cautioned against white hens in the farmyard. They were not fertile: "vitentur albae [gallinae] quae fere cum sint molles ac minus vivaces, tum ne fecundae quidem facile reperiun- tur." Secondly, because of their visibility, they were easy prey to predatory birds like hawks or eagles: "atque etiam conspicuae propter insigne candoris ab accipitribus et aquilis saepius abripiuntur" (8.2.7). Not only, however, does the hen's natural enemy leave her unhurt, but she hatches an extraordinary brood of chicks, and from them the villa takes its name: "tanta pullorum

16Trist. 3.1.39-46 gives us a contemporary's view of the possible interpretations:

cur tamen opposita velatur ianua lauro, cingit et augustas arbor opaca fores?

num quia perpetuos meruit domus ista triumphos, an quia Leucadio semper amata deo est?

ipsane quod festa est, an quod facit omnia festa? quam tribuit terris, pacis an ista nota est?

utque viret semper laurus nec fronde caduca carpitur, aeternum sic habet illa decus?

Scholars have emphasized the connections of the laurel with war and peace and especially Apollo, but Ovid, and still more, Pliny, remind us of laurel's omnipresent use as a symbol of domestic happiness-in weddings, for homecomings, etc. See NAT. 15.127: "laurus triumphis proprie dicatur, vel gratissima domibis." Laurel is, therefore, an attribute of Concordia, a keynote in Augustan propaganda. See Ovid, Fast. 6.91-92. Virgil, according to a comment by Servius (Aen. 6.230), substituted olive for laurel in his description of a funeral because he knew that it was a symbol of Augustus and did not wish it to have gloomy associations. M. B. Ogle, "Laurel in Ancient Religion and Folklore," AJP 31 (1910) 287-311, is still the best work on the laurel's significance in the Greek and Roman world.

170n the coin, see J.-B. Giard, Catalogue des monnaies de l'Empire Romain I: Auguste (Paris 1976) 72, no. 98, pl. IV, nos. 98-104. An enlarged ( x 4) photograph in N. Hannestad, Roman Art and Imperial Policy (Aarhus, Denmark, 1986) 57, illustration 36, shows the wreath clearly, small in relation to the oversized branch. C. H. V. Sutherland and R. A. G. Carson, The Roman Imperial Coinage 1 (rev. ed., London 1984) no. 264 (= H. Mattingly, BMCI vol. 1, no. 617), leave the branch unidentified, while Hannestad calls it olive. But the story from our written sources can leave no doubt.




suboles provenit ut hodieque ea villa 'ad gallinas' vocetur" (Suet., Gal. 1). The hen, by her "remarkable whiteness" - conspicui candoris (Plin. NAT.

15.136)--reveals herself as sacred to the gods.

White hens were not identified with a particular deity in the Roman world,'8 and Jordan, in a commentary on a confused and difficult passage in Sextus Aurelius Victor, derived from Suetonius' Life of Galba, rightly found no basis for Victor's comment that the white hens of the omen were useful for religious rites: "[gallinae] quae adeo multae albaeque erant, aptioresque religionibus" (Lib. de Caes. 5.17).19 It is not the gallina alba but the brood of chicks that makes Victor's comment sensible and suits the military message of the omen. The Romans regularly used pulli to take the auspices before any military undertaking.20 The chicks' willingness not merely to eat but to peck eagerly at the corn given them indicated the favor of the gods toward the battle. The famous altar of the magistri of the Vicus sandaliarius, now in the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence, perfectly captures the moment of just such a tripudium, the usual term for an augury taken by feeding the chickens. Au- gustus, veiled and with lituus in hand, is taking the auspices as a chicken pecks vigorously at his feet. Augustus may be overseeing the departure of his adopted grandson Gaius to war in the East, but it is Augustus who possessed imperium and, consequently, the right to take the auspices.21

The omen, which connects a symbol of the auspices, the start of a military campaign, with a symbol of victory, looks back to a similar association on Republican coinage between symbols of the auspicia (e.g., lituus) and symbols of victory (e.g., the laurel wreath).22 Skill in augury was connected with success in the field. Pecking chickens do not appear frequently in artistic representations, but an ingot, dated to the third century B.C., has this motif, which Thomsen has interpreted as a reference to a Roman naval victory during the First Punic War.23 A small gemstone from Cologne, recently studied by Zwierlein-Diehl, who dates it between 37 and 31 B.C., is of special interest

18There is a reference in Festus (Lindsay, p. ll0M) to the sacrifice of hens of no specific color to Aesculapius. In a late source, Alciphron, there is a sacrifice of a white hen to Aphrodite and the nymphs (nticarokat tratptKat 13, fr. 6, 5 in the 1905 Teubner edition). But hens, unlike cocks, play little role in religion. The evidence on domestic fowl is collected by O. Keller, Die antike Tierwelt (Leipzig 1913) vol. 2, 131-45.

19"Zur Topographie von Rom," Hermes 2 (1867) 85-89. 200n tripudium, E. Marbach in RE 13.230-32; I. M. J. Valeton, "De Modis Auspicandi

Romanorum," Mnemosyne 18 (1890) 211-15. 21Description, illustration, and bibliography in G. Mansuelli, Galleria degli Uffizi I (Rome

1958) 203-6, fig. 198 a-d. The identification of the figures on either side of Augustus remains controversial. The young man may be Gaius or Lucius, the female figure Livia, a goddess, or a priestess.

22A. Alfdldi, "The Main Aspects of Political Propaganda on Coinage of the Roman Republic," in Essays in Roman Coinage Presented to Harold Mattingly (Oxford 1956) 85-87. See too J. R. Fears, "The Theology of Victory at Rome," ANRW 2.17.2 (1981) esp. 773-824. And for a discussion of the controversy about augural symbolism on coins, J. R. Fears. "The Coinage of Q. Cornificius and Augural Symbolism on Late Republican Denarii," Historia 24 (1975) 592-602.

23R. Thomsen, Early Roman Coinage: A Study of the Chronology (Copenhagen 1961) vol. 3, 143; cf. 225 for a specific attribution to the victory of Duillius at Mylae in 260 B.C.




because of its date close to the publication of the omen.24 The carved piece of glass is a prototype from which copies were made and distributed, presumably within Octavian's circle. The cameo shows a tripod from which rises a snake and below which are two pecking chickens. A lituus and simpuvimn fill out the space. The two symbols and the tripod refer to Octavian's membership in three priestly colleges, the pontifices, the augures, and the XV viri sacrisfaciundis. Zwierlein-Diehl interprets the pecking chickens as an advertisement of Octa- vian's success in a military enterprise, which the author argues is the battle of Actium, carried out under the aegis of Apollo, symbolized by the tripod, and the auspices of Octavian. But a connection with the omen, which the author does not suggest, might also point to the battle with Pompey. It is tempting, in any case, to find the inspiration for this infrequent motif in the famous omen and to read from it the use to which the offspring of the gallina alba were put in Octavian's propaganda.

The hen like the laurel was a sacred gift and the haruspices ordered its preservation and the rearing of any progeny: "conservari alitem et subolem iussere haruspices" (Plin. NAT. 15.136). Suetonius and Cassius Dio, as we have seen, wrote that the flock survived until the death of Nero, and some lines from Juvenal suggest that the flock was well enough known to be the origin of a proverbial phrase to describe someone blessed by good fortune:25

extra communia censes ponendum, quia tu gallinae filius albae, nos viles pulli, nati infelicibus ovis? (13.140-42)

If the laurel played a visible and continuing role in Julio-Claudian family propaganda, what of the hen and the chicks? I suggest that this flock became the source of the pulli used in augury by Augustus and his descendants, primarily for military campaigns but also on other occasions, for the use of pulli was not, as is often assumed, limited to war. Galba, for instance, perhaps following a traditional custom, used pulli to take the auspicia at the beginning of the Roman New Year (Suet., Gal. 18).26

The association of birds with augury reached deep into Rome's past. They figure prominently in the legend of Romulus, not merely in the famous omen of vultures, for, as artistic representations show us, birds perch in the branches of the ficus ruminalis, less as nourishers of the young boys, although that role is attributed to them, than as a religious symbol.27 The birds represent the

24E. Zwierlein-Diehl, "Simpuvium Numae," Tainia (Mainz 1980) vol. 1, 405-22, and vol. 2, tables 76-78. See Zwierlein-Diehl's n. 43 for further examples of the motif in ancient art.

25This is the interpretation of E. Courtney, A Commentary on the Satires of Juvenal (London 1980) at 13.140. It has also, less plausibly, been connected with a delicate, effeminate type. See G. W. Mooney, Suetonius' Life of Galba (New York 1930) 190.

26For other, nonmilitary examples, see Serv., Aen. 6.198; Plut., Tib. Gracchus 17; Cic. Ad Fam. 10.12.3, with discussion by J. Linderski in "The Augural Law," ANRW 2.16.3, 2213-14. My interpretation gives a more personal and family character to the scene of augury by tripudium on the altar of the Vicus Sandaliarius, a scene described by I. S. Ryberg, Rites of the State Religion in Roman Art (Rome 1955) 60-61 as "a family event of dynastic import."

270n the subject see esp. D. Briquel, "L'oiseau ominal, la louve de Mars, la truie f6conde," MEFRA 88 (1976, 1) 31-50. A raven along with symbols of augury appears on a coin of Antony from 43-42 (see Crawford [above n. 9] vol. 1, no. 489.1). There were thus contemporary analo- gies.




centrality of augury in the founding of Rome and in the biography of Romulus, the "optumus augur" (Cic., Div. 1.3). The twelve vultures that appeared to Octavian in his first consulship suggested his role as founder. The hen and the chicks also emphasized the special approval of the gods and the special skill of Octavian in reading the omens. The continued use of these birds, as of the laurel, cast a charismatic aura around Augustus and his descendants and inevitably reinforced the idea that the triumph and duspicia were and ought to be the exclusive prerogative of his family.

In an article in 1867 Jordan rejected any relationship between the name of the villa on the Via Flaminia and a district or street, the gallinae albae, in the sixth region of Rome on the western portion of the Viminal.28 Jordan emphasized that the name of Livia's villa-ad gallinas-was different, but an inscription discovered in 1909 shows that the villa was also known as the gallinae albae.29 A passage in Sextus Aurelius Victor (Lib. de Caes. 5.17) seems to imply that a place for the birds was kept in the city of Rome: "[gallinae] quae adeo multae albaeque erant, aptioresque religionibus, ut iis Romae habeatur hodie locus."30 Jordan does not accept this idea but argues instead that an unknown scribe of the Middle Ages confused the villa and the area in Rome and invented the usefulness of the hens in religion to explain the Roman place name. Jordan believes Victor is referring to the villa of Livia. Victor is, of course, borrowing from Suetonius' Life of Galba, where it is the villa on the Via Flaminia which is being described. We could have, in other words, a striking but not wholly implausible coincidence of names. Jordan wanted to explain the name as a reference to a statue on the analogy of the statues of the ciconiae nixae or the fountain of the quattuor scari in Rome. Since Jordan saw no use for the animals, he did not speculate on any reason why there may have been a place for them in the city. I think we should not dismiss the possibility that the area on the Viminal took its name from some part of the famous flock kept there for religious rites, closer and more conve- nient to Rome than the flock at the ninth milestone of the Via Flaminia.

What about Livia's role in the omen? Although the omen was clearly military in character and implications, the recipient of the hen and the laurel was Livia. Suetonius (Gal. 1) puts the omen "post Augusti statim nuptias," while Pliny (NAT. 15.136) dates it to the time of Livia's betrothal: "cum pacta esset illa Caesari." The betrothal and marriage occurred in late 39 or early 38 during Octavian's preparation for a military campaign in Sicily. The omen clearly is in response to contemporary events, and Livia's appearance may also have a propaganda purpose closely connected with her marriage to Octavian.

Scandal and gossip attended the marriage of Octavian and Livia, for both

28See above, n. 19. Topographical details and sources in S. B. Platner and T Ashby, A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (Oxford 1929) 246.

29CIL 6.37763; T Ashby and R. A. L. Fell, "The Via Flaminia," JRS 11 (1921) 145. In Pliny and Suetonius the villa is called "ad gallinas" while Cassius Dio does not name it.

30The complete text from the Epit. de Caes. from the 1975 Bud6 edition by P. Dufraigne reads: "hic finis Caesarum genti fuit: quem fore prodigiorum multa denuntiavere, praecipueque [eorum praediis] arescens lauri nemus dicatum triumphantibus, atque interitus gallinarum, quae adeo multae albaeque erant, aptioresque religionibus, ut iis Romae habeatur hodie locus."




divorced other spouses, and Livia was six months pregnant by her former husband at the time of the wedding. The haste with which the marriage was concluded and the ex-husband's complaisant role as betrother of his former wife added to the rumors. Antony found material here for propaganda, charg- ing Octavian with having divorced Scribonia because she became angry at his affair with another woman. In his autobiography Augustus tried to refute this charge by adducing another reason--Scribonia's shrewish disposition. His interest in clearing the record is instructive: when at a later period he tried to introduce legislation on morality and act the role of censor, his past came back to haunt him. Livia must also have been the object of gossip and scandal, and perhaps the attacks continued, for in 35 B.C. Octavian had a law passed to confer the equivalent of tribunician sacrosanctity on her.3 One purpose of the story of the gift to Livia was to surround the marriage with divine approval and dignity. The omen easily lends itself to interpretation as a marriage omen, a corroboration by the gods of their approval of the marriage and a triumphant hope, tragically never realized, of a new race of triumphatores, symbolized by the prolific hen and laurel, to be born from this union. The marriage, even if a "love-match," as it is commonly described, joined Octavian with a represen- tative of two distinguished Roman families, and the omen boasted that Octa- vian had acquired ties with which to match the family pretensions of men like Antony or Sextus Pompey.

Cassius Dio's interpretation of Livia's role in the omen is interesting in its reflection of her later position as a powerful and influential woman. His comment also shows how the story continued as a living legend, subject with time to different explanations. Cassius Dio (48.52.3--4) writes that when the omen occurred Livia reacted with joy, but the populace became afraid and believed that Livia would hold the power of Caesar in her hands and control him in everything: t6 Tzs z Atoui •tu pPdv KEsivfl El~V KL9' fl#ovijv 47y- vgto, tot 86'

.llot S 6og o vesoi1]e. 80uKfiv

y6.p Opvlt&9, KXoviov 6dqtvrl

Gy~7pKtrou q(ppouc(av, &ELOSg ;g T6v KV 6KOV wClZfil qv•3ai). Kati t6KEt yd7p

o0 (PtLLKpOV TO (Y1lCEtOV CIvatC, TrWv T 6opvtlSaC Av htlstCXiC WLY7 KCli tf1V 866qvrlv q6Tue.

.... ft . s A.toui.a yKro ? (oGS Lttl KUai zilv tzo Kcaifotpo;

icxvb Kti Av t(I UUv tOfO KpaT11?iCstlV iEp s. Livia's enemies were likely the source of this malicious interpretation. Livia herself may have helped to keep the story alive, for it cast about her, as well as her husband, an aura of the supernatural.

Suetonius (Gal. 1) calls the laurels on the Via Flaminia a laurel grove (lauretum) and Pliny (NAT. 15.137) speaks of a silva, not merely a group of

31Propaganda of Antony in Suet., Aug. 69.1, and Augustus' defence, taken from his autobiography, in 62.2. The famous lampoon about the "lucky have children in three months" undoubtedly originated in Antony's circle. See Suet., Cl. 1; Cass. Dio 48.44.1-5. Discussion in K. Scott, "The Political Propaganda of 44-33 B.C.," MAAR 11 (1933) 30-31. On Octavian's effort to protect Livia from scandal via the grant of sacrosanctity, R. A. Bauman, "Tribunician Sacrosanctity in 44, 36 and 35 B.C.," RhM 124 (1981) 166-83. Cass. Dio 54.16.6 tells a story of a young man brought before Augustus on a charge of adultery with a woman whom he subsequently married. The accusations were obviously engineered by those who disliked Augustus' efforts to legislate morality and also remembered Augustus' youthful indiscretions. Augustus, so Cassius Dio reports, was so embarrassed that he became tongue-tied.




bushes but a plantation or grove. We are right to call this a sacred grove, for the trees and the place, the spot of a miraculum, were infused with the divinity of the family's founder. Such groves were an essential part of early Roman religion, although they had, by Augustus' day, largely disappeared from an urban setting.32 In Rome their names, locations, and histories show that these groves and even individual trees were frequently associated with the names of the legendary founders and heroes of Rome. Such groves figure prominently in the Aeneid and, like the lauretum on the Via Flaminia near the Tiber, lie outside cities and at times are closely related to springs or rivers.33 The locale on the Via Flaminia perfectly harmonized with the rural setting of a sacred grove whose remoteness from the city added to its mysteriousness.

In Book 5 of the Aeneid (755-61) Virgil shows how the founding of such groves formed part of the duties of the founder of a city, for Aeneas, establish- ing a second Troy in Sicily, marks out the pomerium, names the city, and founds a temple to Venus, the city's patron goddess. As his last act, an expression of pietas, he establishes a priesthood for Anchises' burial place and a sacred grove. This hero-cult with its tomb and surrounding grove are to become holy places for the town's new residents:

fundatur Veneri Idaliae tumuloque sacerdos ac lucus late sacer additus Anchiseo. (760-61)

Augustus also founded cities around groves associated with his own name and worship. In Spain, for example, there was a lucus Augusti, a colony formed around a grove in which there presumably stood an altar to the genius of the Emperor. Two other settlements attest similar groves, the locale of an imperial cult.34 When Juba II, Augustus' childhood companion and later king of Mauretania, an antiquarian and scholar of Roman history and customs, founded a new city, he showed his understanding of Augustus' archaizing religious tendencies, for he named the city Caesarea and established a sacred laurel grove with an altar to Augustus. Some of his coins show an altar, flanked by two laurels, with the inscription LUCUS AUGUSTI. Juba complimented Augustus as his city's founder and patron god by planting a stand of laurel,

32There does not exist an up-to-date study of sacred groves in the Roman world. Basic are still DarSag., "lucus," 1351-56; A. Pasqualini, "lucus," in DeRuggiero, Diz-Epig., 1969-89, which relies often on G. Stara-Tedde, "I boschi sacri dell' antica Roma," Bull.Comm. 33 (1905) 189-232, and P. Grimal, Les jardins romains (Paris 1969) 53-56; 165-71. Servius' famous definition (Aen. 1.310)--"lucus enim est arborum multitudo cum religione, nemus vero composita multitudo arborum, silva diffusa et inculta" -is, as Grimal (55, n. 5) says, "trop rigoureuse" even for Virgil.

33See, e.g., Aen. 3.300-5; 8.102-4; 9.581-85. See Serv., Aen. 3.302: "lucum numquam ponit sine religione"; cf. Cic. Leg. 2.8: "in urbibus delubra habento, lucos in agris habento."

34For a grove in Perusia, CIL 11.1922, in Gallia Narbonensis, see "Lucus Augusti Vocon- tiorum" in Diz-Epig. 1993-94; "Lucus Augusti" in Diz-Epig. 1992-93 on the town in Spain. A possible emendation of llog; to 6Laoo in a text of Strabo (4.3.2) would put a grove around the famous altar at Lugdunum dedicated during Augustus' reign. See D. Fishwick, "Provincial Ruler Worship in the West," ANRW 2.16.2 (1978) 1205, n. 11, and P. Wuilleumier, Lyon, Metropole des Gaules (Paris 1953) 42.




Augustus' personal symbol.35 Octavian planted a grove which symbolized his father's inherited military ability and Jupiter's favor. In time, however, the memory of the Republican period faded, and for Pliny in the latter half of the next century this grove has no connection with Julius Caesar but represents only the miraculous beginnings of the by-then-legendary first princeps. The grove, in fact, spontaneously created itself from a divine gift and put Augustus in the popular tradition of Rome's early heroes, with whose names and deeds were associated famous places in Rome and close-by. The discovery at the villa of the Prima Porta statue of Augustus in his role as imperator further corrobo- rates the religious significance of this place in Augustan family propaganda. It is a mistake to talk of the location of the statue as Livia's villa. Surely it was an adornment to the grove that symbolized the eternal, god-given ability of the gens lulia for military victory.36

Augustus avoided overt assertion of his divinely given right to rule; instead, myth offered a more subtle means to keep the idea current. In addition, a story such as that of the omen impressed the credulous, those who only dimly perceived the true import of sophisticated temple sculptures or the complex symbolism of literary eulogy. In a surviving passage from his autobiography, Augustus tells of how the city populace believed in Caesar's divinity at the sight of a comet that appeared in the sky over Rome ("eo sidere significari vulgus credidit Caesaris animam inter deorum immortalium numina recep- tam," in Plin., NAT., 2.94). Augustus understood the gullibility of the un- sophisticated and how to capture their loyalty. Here were visible and tangible items which came from heaven and surrounded Augustus with a legendary history to set him apart from other men and equate him with the heroic founders of Rome. Such objects had precedent in the sacred ancile which fell from heaven to Numa and which, carefully preserved, appeared annually in the rites of the priesthood of the Salii or in the palladium kept in the temple of the Vestal Virgins. Other events in Augustus' life encouraged similar myth- making.37

35For the coins, see J. Mazard, Corpus Nummorum Numidiae Mauretaniaeque (Paris 1955) nos. 157-61. Alfdldi (see n. 15 above) 36 connected the coin with the laurel bushes on the Palatine: "Der loyale Vassellenk6nig Mauretaniens, luba II, hat einen heiligen Bezirk f'ir die Pflege des Augustuskultes eingerichtet. Er hat diese Kulteinrichtung auch an seinen Miinzen kundgegeben, deren Riickseite den Altar mit den zwei Lorbeerbiumen zeigt und die Legende LUCUS AUGUSTI." Since the coin celebrates a "grove," we can look, in my opinion, for its inspiration to the famous grove on the Via Flaminia, with whose story Juba II was surely familiar. On groves associated with the cult of the deified Augustus in Egypt, see the letter of Claudius to the Egyptians in H. I. Bell, Jews and Christians in Egypt (London 1924) 6, 24 (col. 3, line 42) 33, n. 42.

36Little attention has been paid to the story or the grove in the extensive bibliography on the Prima Porta statue. An exception is H. Kihler, "Der Augustus von Primaporta," Gymnasium 63 (1956) 345-50, and in greater detail, in Die Augustusstatue von Primaporta (Kiln 1959), esp. 26-28, who would like to have the missing object in Augustus' (restored) right hand be a golden laurel branch (see illustration 32 for the proposed restoration). Kdihler argues that the spot of the prodigy achieved a legendary reputation that made it as well as the house in which Augustus was born "Kultsti'tten" (25).

37For example in the "myth" of his mother's impregnation by Apollo in the guise of a snake. See Suet. Aug. 94.4. The event is depicted on the Portland vase (see Simon [n. 9 above] esp. 13-20). Augustus regularly marked the important events of his life by omens. See Suet., Aug. 94-96.




In one of the most famous and mystical passages of the Aeneid, Aeneas plunges into a grove of woods in pursuit of the elusive golden bough. His mother Venus helps to show him the way as two doves, heavenly messengers, guide him. The golden bough has a meaning of its own, however complex, solely within the context of the poem, yet may allude as well to rites and customs of the ancient world. No single rite or custom may be in question but a whole range of ideas - from the branches carried by initiates in the mysteries to the golden rod carried by Hermes. No one to my knowledge has associated the golden bough with the laurel branch plucked from the grove on the Via Flaminia and carried by Octavian in the great triumphal pageant of 29 B.C., of which Virgil was apparently a witness.38 The golden bough, as the Sibyl explains to Aeneas, yields itself only to those whom fate has selected:

namque ipse volens facilisque sequetur, si te fata vocant. (Aen. 6.146-47)

The triumphal display of 29 B.C. was an extravaganza Augustus chose never to repeat. While political reasons may have dictated his preference for self- effacement, he also thus elevated this occasion to a unique and therefore memorable event. The dramatic moment at which he appeared with the symbol of divine favor thus won its way to mythic stature as the survivor and victor in the civil wars attempted not merely to win allegiance but to thrill and awe men to it.39

MARLEEN B. FLORY Gustavus Adolphus College

38Described in Aen. 8.714-28, where Virgil particularly emphasizes the triumphal parade as a religious occasion, an act of thanksgiving, a description that not only reflected the true nature of a triumph but surely pleased Augustus. The only reference to the golden bough as laurel that I have found is in L. Hermann, "Le rameau d'or et l'empereur Auguste," MWlanges Bidez, vol. 2 (Brussels 1934) 487-94, who simply changes "aureus . . . ramus" (Aen. 6.137) to "laureus ramus" without any evidence to justify it. He makes no reference to the laurel grove or its history. Kdihler thought of a golden branch for the Primaporta statue but made no connection with Virgil. We should also perhaps recall that a gold wreath was held over the head of the conquering general as he marched in triumph. See W. Ehlers, "triumphus," RE 13, 506. The evidence that it was a crown of oak leaves comes from Tertullian alone (De Corona 13) and has generated controversy. Kraft (n. 6 above) argues for a gold laurel wreath but is refuted by H. S. Versnel, Triumphus, An Inquiry into the Origin, Development and Meaning of the Roman Triumph (Leiden 1970) 74-77.

39Octavian clearly strove for and achieved a dazzling psychological effect with his triumph of 29 B.C. Propertius (2.1.31-34) thought it a subject for epic poetry (cf. Virg., Aen. 8.714-28). Virgil made it the climax of his description of the Roman history depicted on Aeneas' shield. Octavian, not surprisingly, refused to share the limelight, and C. Carrinas, whose triumph Cassius Dio (51.21.6) puts in 29, in fact had his triumph a year later. See Degrassi, Insc. Ital. 13.1, 87 and 570. Much has been written about how Augustus slowly but firmly closed off the right to triumph to all but his own family. See, e.g., R. Syme, The Roman Revolution (Oxford 1939) 404 and n. 6. Augustus may have later disapproved in public of the extravagance of triumphal display - an act in keeping with what we know of his efforts to rein in luxury. See Dion. Hal. 2.34.3.

I would like to take this opportunity to express my thanks to the American Academy in Rome where I did the research for this article in 1985-1986. I am also grateful to the Mellon Foundation for its support of a fellowship at the Academy.



octavian and the omen of the "gallina alba"

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