Another piece in Mysterious Powers and Strange Forces (1979) casually throws out this tidbit regarding ancient omens:
According to one legend, a Roman emperor cut short a journey because he believed the flight pattern of some eagles to be a bad omen. The following night, the room he would have slept is said to have collapsed.
The authors don't like making this easy on researchers, do they? Let's start with the eagle, as explained by unrv.com:
The aquila, or eagle, is one the most enduring symbols of Roman civilization. The ancient Romans always associated the eagle with power and authority because of its association with the god Jupiter. The eagle was considered majestic and transcendent, to the point that live birds were often caged on emperors' funeral pyres. Once they broke free and flew skyward, the Romans considered it a manifestation of the deceased emperor's transition to godhood. Ancient Romans esteemed the eagle and adopted it as a symbol of victory. Pliny the Elder wrote extensively on eagles, noting that they possessed excellent eyesight and were skilled parents. [1]
So why would anyone study the flight paths of eagles or any bird? To keep the augurs busy, of course.
Augury was a religious practice of observing the behavior of birds to receive omens. When the individual, known as the augur, read these signs, it was referred to as "taking the auspices". Depending upon the birds, the auspices from the gods could be favorable or unfavorable. Though auspices were prevalent before the Romans, Romans are often linked with auspices because of their connection to Rome's foundation and because Romans established rules for the reading of auspices that helped keep it an essential part of Roman culture. [2]
After digging around for a week or so, the only meritorious reference to a Roman emperor and bird omens I can find has to do with Augustus – and then it's the wrong bird:
In his Natural History, the elder Pliny discusses an omen involving a white hen (gallina alba). This story relates to an event that transpired on the day that Livia Drusilla was to wed Octavian (17 January 38 B.C.). On that day, according to Pliny, an eagle dropped the white hen onto Livia's lap. She found that it was clutching a branch of laurel in its beak. She was advised to raise the bird and its offspring and to plant the twig. The laurel tree that resulted provided wreaths for triumphant generals in the imperial period. [3]
Finally, researching this from the "collapsed room" angle repeatedly led me to the story of the Erfurt latrine disaster. It involved a Holy Roman Emperor (Henry VI of Germany) holding an informal assembly at a cathedral in east-central Germany. The assembled nobles' combined weight caused the building's wooden second-story floor to collapse. Most fell through into the latrine cesspit below the ground floor, where about 60 of them drowned. [4] No, I don't think this is what Mysterious Powers had in mind. At least I hope not.
Your thoughts?
References
- [1] Roman Eagle (Aquila); unrv.com
- [2] Wikipedia: Augury
- [3] "Octavian and the Omen of the 'Gallina Alba'", The Classical Journal; Marleen B. Flory, April-May, 1989; Vol. 84, No. 4.
- [4] Wikipedia: Erfurt latrine disaster
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