Mantĭké
（
μαντική, sc.
τέχνη). The
name given by the Greeks to the gift or art of divination. The belief of the ancients that it
was possible to find out what was hidden or what was going to happen sprang from the idea that
the gods, when implored by prayer, or even when unimplored, graciously communicated
revelations to men by means of direct inspiration or through signs requiring interpretation.
Hence the ancients distinguished between natural and artificial divination.
Divination is natural when a man receives the supposed inspiration in a dream or in an
ecstatic state. The belief in divine inspiration in dreams is of the greatest antiquity, and
continued to be held when the natural causes of dreams had been ascertained. The meaning of
prophetic dreams cannot, however, always be immediately comprehended; they are mostly
symbolical, and therefore require an interpretation. As a guide to this, there arose in the
course of time certain rules resulting from experience, which produced a special
art—that of interpreting dreams—of which some idea is given by the
Ὀνειροκριτικά, on the interpretation of dreams, by
Artemidorus (q.v.). Similarly, the dreams obtained
by sleeping at holy places (
incubatio), which were always considered
prophetic, usually needed a priest to interpret them.
The power of more or less clearly seeing in waking hours things concealed from ordinary
vision was believed by the Greeks to be a special gift of Apollo. It is from him that Homer
makes Calchas receive his revelations, although no mention is made of his being in the
ecstatic state usually connected with this kind of soothsaying. At the oracles this state was
usually produced by external influences (see
Oracula); women were held to be particularly susceptible to them. Besides oracles and
persons reputed to be inspired, use was made of various collections of
older oracular sayings and pretended predictions of prophets and prophetesses of former times,
such as the Branchidae of Miletus, the Iamidae of Olympia, the Eumolpidae of Athens, and the
Sibyls. Such collections were not only in the possession of States and priesthoods, but also
in that of private individuals, called
χρησμολόγοι, who drew
on their store when paid to do so by those who believed in them, and often also explained the
dark sayings. Like the prophets by immediate inspiration, those also were called seers who
interpreted according to certain rules the divine signs which formed the subject of the
artificial variety of the art of divination.
From the very oldest times special importance was attached to omens of birds (whether in
answer to prayer or not), which were discriminated from one another by various rules, with
regard partly to the kind of birds, partly to the manner of their appearing—e. g.
direction (favourable from the right, unfavourable from the left), flight, alighting, singing,
and anything else they did. The principal birds consulted were the birds of prey that fly
highest and alone—the eagle (the messenger of Zeus), the heron, the hawk, the
falcon, and the vulture; in the case of ravens and crows, the cawing was an omen.
Second in importance were the various phenomena of the sky considered as divine signs.
Whether thunder and lightning were favourable or not was also decided by the direction, right
or left, from which they came. At Sparta, shooting stars were thought to show that the gods
were displeased with the kings. Eclipses of the sun and moon, comets, and meteors were signs
that inspired terror. Prophesying from the stars, however, did not become known in Greece till
the time of Alexander the Great.
In important enterprises, especially in war, recourse was had to an examination of the
condition of sacrificed animals or
ἱεροσκοπία—oxen, sheep, and also pigs being most frequently the
victims. The points observed were: normal or abnormal nature of the entrails, especially the
liver, with the gall-bladder, and also the heart, spleen, and lungs. The various kinds of
entrails and their abnormal conditions were made the subject of a highly elaborate system, so
that no Greek army could dispense with a skilled interpreter of signs. When the omens were
unfavourable, the sacrifice was repeated till they were favourable, or the enterprise was
postponed. The manner, too, in which animals went to be sacrificed, whether willingly or with
reluctance (
Juv.xii. 5, with Mayor's note), was looked upon as an
omen, as also the way in which the sacrifice burned on the altar, the burning of the flame
itself, the rising or sinking of the smoke, etc. These signs drawn from fire were the subject
of
πυρομαντεία.
There was, indeed, a general inclination to regard all striking and unusual events as hints
from the gods, and to interpret them one's self, or to have them interpreted by skilled seers.
From ancient times the chance utterances of others were thought to be prophetic in so far as
they applied to the circumstances of the moment. For such omens also the gods were asked.
Besides these, lots and dice were used for predictions. There were many other artificial
varieties of the art of divination, some of them very strange, which were in special
favour in the lower classes of the people and in later times; as, for instance, soothsaying
with a sieve suspended by threads, for the purpose of finding out thieves, or remedies for
illness, etc., that name being thought the one required, at mention of which the sieve ceased
to turn round. As early as Aristotle allusion is made to chiromancy, or palmistry. See
Bouché-Leclercq,
Histoire de la Divination dans
l'Antiquité, 4 vols.
(Paris, 1879-82); and the articles
Augur;
Divinatio; Oraculum; Sibylla; Sortes Vergilianae.
