101-15; _Contribution à l’histoire de l’equitatus_, in _Comptes rendus de l’acad. des inscriptions et belles-lettres_, 1904. ii. 190-201; Pellegrini, G., _Fregi arcaici etruschi in terracotta_, etc., in Milani, L. A., _Studi e materiali archeol. e numis._ i. 87-118. CHAPTER V THE AUSPICES I. _Auspicia Privata_ Auspices (auspicia) were signs sent by the gods through which they declared their will to men. Those given in answer to prayer were impetrativa (or impetrita), those sent unasked oblativa. The first were necessarily favorable; the second might be either favorable or the contrary.[578] To take or to hold auspices was to seek such signs in due form. Auspicia, or the singular auspicium, also designated the right or the power to perform the function. They were not a means of prophecy of future events but of ascertaining whether the deity approved a proposed action.[579] With reference to their object and to the persons qualified to take them, they were of two kinds, private and public. Whereas the public auspices, taken in behalf of the state, belonged exclusively to magistrates, the private were open to all;[580] and in early times a Roman always resorted to them before beginning any important business.[581] Though it was permissible to consult any deity,[582] the greatest weight attached to the approval of the supreme god Jupiter.[583] The plebeians, who as long as they were excluded from the magistracies were necessarily debarred from the auspicia publica, enjoyed equally with the patricians all private rights of religion; in fact if the nobles had wished, they possessed no legal means of preventing the holding of auspices or the performance of any other sacred rite in private plebeian houses. Not only is it stated that all had a right to auspicate,[584] but the formula for summoning troops given by Cincius[585] implies that the soldiers, who were mainly plebeian, were accustomed to perform the rite. We find accordingly the elder Cato, a plebeian, attending to the ceremony in his own home.[586] The patricians, however, who believed themselves to be nearer and dearer to the gods than were the plebeians, and who in their struggle to keep themselves a closed caste and the offices barred against the lower social class, declared that conubium if granted would disturb the private as well as public auspices.[587] But this assertion need not signify that the plebeians had no private auspices, it might indicate merely a difference between the plebeian and patrician ceremonies, naturally implying the superiority of the latter. Again when on a certain occasion according to Livy a tribune of the plebs inquired of a patrician why a plebeian could not be made consul, the reply was that no plebeian had the auspices, reiterating that the decemvirs had forbidden conubium to prevent the disturbance of the ceremony by uncertainty of birth.[588] Reference might here be simply