Some might say Julius Caesar was the most influential figure in Roman history. Others might argue it was Brutus, the man who drove out the last of Rome’s kings, or Augustus, who 700 years later, as Rome’s first emperor, would essentially go on to become one. But there’s another, albeit largely unknown contender for one of Roman history’s most influential figures: the humble pullarius, or “priest of the sacred chickens”.
The pullarius was responsible for keeping Rome’s sacred chickens and using them to make divinations or “predictions.” These holy birds, which had been sourced from the island of Negreponte (now Euboea, near Athens), were kept unfed in their cages for a predetermined amount of time before being released and presented with some grain. If they ate the grain, the venture upon which they were being consulted was deemed favourable. If they did not, that venture lacked the god’s backing and was therefore to be abandoned.
This was just one of many forms of augury—not to be confused with “orgy”, though the Romans had plenty of those too—that determined Roman decision-making. There were many ways of trying to divine the will of the gods through augury. Observing and interpreting natural or manmade phenomena (a thunderstorm, perhaps, or an inauspicious chant by the crowd at the games) are a couple of examples. But the most common, ritualised, and legal methods of auguring were getting a priest to either read the entrails of a slaughtered animal or extrapolate meaning from the behaviour of birds.
Augury was central to Roman policymaking. If the auguries weren’t good, an undertaking would be abandoned. If you think that’s insane, imagine how Rome’s enemies must have felt (frustrated, most likely, given that chickens are notoriously difficult to bribe). You might have thought one of Rome’s enemies would consider sneaking some food into the coops. It’s not like antiquity was lacking in genius. But no Socrates or Cicero ever thought to satiate the sacred chickens’ hunger and thereby save their city from the marauding Roman legions.
In the one episode for which we have any substantial information about the pullarius, such guile wasn’t even necessary. For as important as the sacred chickens were to the superstitious practices of the Romans, on this occasion their ruling was ignored. The episode in question took place during the Third Samnite War (298 – 290 BC), fought between the Roman Republic and one of its persistently troublesome neighbours, a tribe to the south known as the Samnites.
The Samnites inhabited the area of what is now the Italian region of Campania, famous for cities such as Naples, and sites sites as Pompeii, Herculaneum, and of course Vesuvius. As native speakers of Oscan, the Samnites were linguistically and ethnically different from the Latin-speaking Romans. They were politically autonomous too, eventually bringing them into conflict with territorially snowballing Romans.
It might not surprise you to learn that the Third Samnite War was not the first time the two powers had come to blows. Two wars had been waged in the late fourth century BC, when Rome began expanding southwards. Rome had won both, but not without suffering some serious and humiliating defeats, particularly at the Battle of the Caudine Forks (nothing to do with cutlery, though there were doubtless many knives) in 321 BC. The Third Samnite War wouldn’t be the last conflict between the two either. The Samnites were the last to hold out against the Romans during the so-called Social War of the 90s and 80s BC, an effort that ushered in their ethnic cleansing under the ruthless Roman general Lucius Cornelius Sulla.
By today’s strategic standards, the beginning of the campaign was a farce for the Samnites. One Roman consul, Spurius Carvilius, was able to storm the town of Amiternum completely unopposed (a spurious claim indeed) while Samnites were busy observing sacrifices and drawing up secret plans. Meanwhile, Rome’s other consul, Lucius Papirius Cursor, stormed another town, Duronia, taking fewer prisoners than his consular colleague but slaughtering what to a Roman general would nevertheless have been a satisfying number.
Papirius then advanced on the Samnite stronghold of Aquilonia, where the majority of the enemy forces were stationed. Mustering his forces outside Aquilonia’s walls, he ventured upon a two-part, quintessentially Roman speech. The first part was concerned with the battle: which weapons the Romans should use and where in the enemy’s armour they should stick them. The second part concerned gods, specifically how the Samnites had so gravely displeased them by breaking their treaty with Rome. Their vengeance, Papirius assured his army, would soon be delivered.
Having worked his men up into a battle frenzy, Papirius then informed them that the battle would, in fact, take place tomorrow, and that they should probably try and get some rest, something that did little to quench their bloodlust as we’re told they hungered through the night for battle. As dawn crept closer, at the beginning of the third night watch, Papirius rose from his quarters and sent for his pullarius. It was time to check the omens.
We should briefly take a moment to spare some sympathy for the pullarius.
Granted, all he had to do was feed grain to chickens and report back whether they had eaten it or not. But telling a pumped-up Roman army that they couldn’t pillage and plunder because a couple of Greek cocks hadn’t touched their breakfast couldn’t have been easy. Indeed, when the pullarius took the auguries, his fears were confirmed when the sacred chickens didn’t touch the grain. And so the presumably unsupervised priest of the chickens decided to lie, telling Papirius that his chickens had eaten so greedily the grain had spilt from their mouths.
Delighted with the favourable omens, Papirius drew up his troops for battle and sent word to his fellow consul to provide some cavalry in support. But just as the Samnites sallied forth, Papirius was distracted by news that the auguries were being called into question. Some of the other pullari were less than convinced the sacred chickens had eaten the corn, and were suggesting the pullarius had lied.
By this stage, Papirius was fully committed to the battle. He suggested, therefore, that the pullarius who had given him his reading be sent immediately to the frontline. If the priest had spoken the truth, then he would have nothing to fear. If he had lied, the gods would visit their wrath upon him. And so it happened that the pullarius was sent to the front line to play his very own game of chicken.
Before the battle had even commenced, one of the enemy javelins struck the pullarius, splaying him out on the ground before the Roman standards. We don’t know whether he died instantly. We can only hope that in his final moments, he felt validated in that his prediction had been correct, and that at least for him the battle had gone badly. Taking far too much pleasure in seeing a priest being slaughtered, Papirius elatedly cried out that he had been divinely punished, and the gods were clearly taking part in the battle. At that moment, we’re told, a crow passed in front of him and gave a loud “caw”, an omen that told him all he wanted to hear. Everything was going to go just fine.
The Romans did win, though only just. The cavalry of Papirius’s co-consul arrived just in time to rout the Samnites, driving them inside the city. Aquilonia soon became the scene of frenzied looting and indiscriminate massacring. So much gold and silver was said to be taken that there was enough to decorate every public building in Rome, with still some left over. We do know that Rome’s victory in the Third Samnite War followed shortly after Aquilonia in 290 BC. What we don’t know, because our one ancient source abruptly cuts off, is how this victory came about.
Our information for this period is at best sketchy and at worst missing. Almost everything we know about Roman history before the second century BC comes from the historian Titus Livy, who was writing during the Age of Augustus (31 BC – 14 AD). In the case of the sacred chickens, Livy was describing an event that took place almost 500 years earlier, meaning we should be sceptical in believing the authenticity of his word-for-word speeches. But we have no reason to doubt the existence of the sacred chickens.
Like all polytheistic ancient societies, the Romans fundamentally believed that all human misfortune could be explained as resulting from the gods acting wrathfully, either because they had been displeased or because they basically just fancied it. The Romans were therefore at pains to make sure their gods were appeased and therefore not tempted to inflict any kind of unnecessary punishment on them. The role superstition played in Roman thought cannot be understated. Nor can the Romans’ widespread belief in magic.
There was, of course, a difference between those who were pious and those who were overly superstitious. Those who were superstitious believed all human suffering could be explained only in terms of angered gods. In fact, our word “superstition” comes from the Latin superstition, formed of the preposition super and the verb stare, which translates as “standing over”. It’s precisely this image of a wrathful god standing over us should we go astray, that gives “superstition” its modern meaning—and gave Stevie Wonder an absolute belter of a single in 1972.
It can be tempting to see the ancient gods almost like children in how they demanded such constant supplicatory attention. But mortals felt nonetheless obliged to keep them sweet so nothing horrific befell them, which is why they poured such attention and industry into performing their sacred rites and rituals both regularly and correctly.
Few voices capture the powerful influence augury exerted over the Roman imagination better than the second-century BC Greek historian Polybius. Polybius describes Rome as a state held together by superstitious fear. The constant threat of the invisible, quick-to-anger gods served the providential purpose of keeping the lawless, violent, selfish desires of the multitude in check more than their fellow man ever could.
This is an oversimplification. In reality, the entire Roman state was held together by superstition. Specific augural law dictated every venture the Romans entertained the idea of starting. Priests were immensely powerful, which is why Rome’s first emperors were so keen to consolidate the powers and name of the pontifex maximus (or “High Priest”). Because most of us today are raised not to be superstitious, a lot of this sounds insane. But in the violent, tumultuous times of antiquity, you can understand why it might be comforting to believe some divinity had your back.
As long as you treated them well.
