Sortes (ancient Rome)
Sortes (
These sortes or lots were usually little tablets or counters made of wood or other materials and were commonly thrown into a sitella or urn, filled with water. The lots were sometimes thrown like dice.[3] The name of "sortes" was in fact given to anything used to determine chances,[4] and was also applied to any verbal response of an oracle.[5]
Various things were written upon the lots according to circumstances, as for instance the names of the persons using them. It seems to have been a favorite practice in later times to write the verses of illustrious poets upon little tablets and to draw them out of the urn like other lots; the verses which a person thus obtained being supposed to be applicable to him (see Sortes Homericae and Sortes Vergilianae, lots created from verses of Homer and Virgil).[6]
In the Biblical account of the prophet
The Sibylline Books were probably also consulted in this way. Those who foretold future events by lots were called Sortilegi.[10]
The sortes convivales were sealed tablets, which were sold at entertainments, and upon being opened or unsealed entitled the purchaser to things of very unequal value.[11] They were, therefore, a kind of raffle.
See also
References
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, vol. 1, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, pp. 1051–1052
- ^ Regarding the meaning of sors see Cicero, De Divinatione ii. 41
- ^ Suetonius, Tiberius 14
- ^ compare Cicero, De Divinatione i. 34
- ^ Cicero, De Divinatione ii. 56 and Virgil, Aeneid iv. 346, 377
- Spartianus, Hadr. 2
- ^ Jonah 1:7
- ^ Augustine, Confessions iv. 3
- ^ Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, c. xxxviii. note 51
- Lucan, ix. 581
- ^ Suetonius, Octav. 75 and Lampridius, Heliogab. 22
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