ProQuest Dissertations - Historia Antigua

glided unobserved up to the reserved parts of the victim and devoured the liver;as soon as they were seen they suddenly disappeared. On the advice of theaugurs a fresh sacrifice was offered and the parts reserved with greater care, butaccording to the tradition the same thing happened a second and even a thirdtime; the snakes glided up and after tasting the liver slipped away untouched.The augurs warned the commander that the portent concerned him and they badehim be on his guard against secret foes and secret plots. But no foresight couldavert the impending doom. [Trans. Roberts]The fact that the snakes could glide up to the sacrificial victim and taste its liver suggeststhat the altar used for the sacrifice was a mound of dirt or merely a sanctified space on theground. 113Then again, this is perhaps an anecdotal passage, so the means by which thesnakes approached the altar might be immaterial. This example does, however,concretely demonstrate that augurs were present on campaign, in addition to victimariiand haruspices.Gargola accepts that there were portable altars in a Republican army's camp,based on Hyginus' de Munitionibus castrorum, an imperial source of uncertain date. 114Imperial armies certainly had small, portable altars: the so-called Altar of Angera showsthe libation before a sacrifice on just such a portable altar. 115For the middle Republic,however, we have no evidence of portable altars in use in military camps. Polybius, ourbest source for camps during this period, does not mention the religious spaces of thecamp he describes. 116Based on Livy's accounts of campaign sacrifices, it is likely thatsome sort of small portable altar or a dirt altar was used for the sacrifices. By extension,Livy 10.29.18-19 also recounts that Fabius burnt enemy spolia in a heap as a sacrifice to Jupiter Victor{Fabius ... spolia hostium coniecta in aceruum loui Victori cremauii) but this is a different sort of sacrificethan the slaughter of a victim, and so should not be taken as evidence that no altar was ever needed in amilitary setting.114 Gargola (1995), p. 28.115 See Scheid (2007), fig. 19.1 p. 265; Scott Ryberg no. 101; ThesCRA 1, pi. 48, no. 105.116 Polyb. 6.26-42.135