AUDĪTŌRĬUM, as the name implies, is any place for hearing. It was the practice among the Romans for poets and others to read their compositions to their friends, who were sometimes called the auditorium; but the word was also used to express any place in which any thing was heard, and under the empire it was applied to a court of justice. Under the republic the place for all judicial proceedings was the comitium and the forum. But for the sake of shelter and convenience it became the practice to hold courts in the Basilicae, which contained halls, which were also called auditoria. It is first under M. Aurelius that the auditorium principis is mentioned, by which we must understand a hall or room in the imperial residence; and in such a hall Septimius Severus and the later emperors held their regular sittings when they presided as judges. The latest jurists use the word generally for any place in which justice was administered. AUGUR, AUGŬRĬUM; AUSPEX, AUSPĬCĬUM. _Augur_ or _auspex_ meant a diviner by birds, but came in course of time, like the Greek οἰωνός, to be applied in a more extended sense: his art was called _augurium_ or _auspicium_. Plutarch relates that the _augures_ were originally termed _auspices_. The word _auspex_ was supplanted by _augur_, but the scientific term for the observation continued on the contrary to be _auspicium_ and not _augurium_. By Greek writers on Roman affairs, the augurs are called οἰωνοπόλοι, οἰωνοσκόποι, οἰωνισταί, οἱ ἐπ’ οἰωνοῖς ἱερεῖς. The belief that the flight of birds gave some intimation of the will of the gods seems to have been prevalent among many nations of antiquity, and was common to the Greeks, as well as the Romans; but it was only among the latter people that it was reduced to a complete system, governed by fixed rules, and handed down from generation to generation. In Greece, the oracles supplanted the birds, and the future was learnt from Apollo and other gods, rarely from Zeus, who possessed very few oracles in Greece. The contrary was the case at Rome: it was from Jupiter that the future was learnt, and the birds were regarded as his messengers. It must be remarked in general, that the Roman auspices were essentially of a practical nature; they gave no information respecting the course of future events, they did not inform men _what was to happen_, but simply taught them _what they were to do, or not to do_; they assigned no reason for the decision of Jupiter--they simply announced, yes or no. The words _augurium_ and _auspicium_ came to be used in course of time to signify the observation of various kinds of signs. They were divided into five sorts: _ex caelo_, _ex avibus_, _ex tripudiis_, _ex quadrupedibus_, _ex diris_. Of these, the last three formed no part of the ancient auspices.--1. _Ex caelo._ This included the observation of the various kinds of thunder and lightning, and was regarded as the most important, _maximum auspicium_. Whenever it was reported by a