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The Vulture Oracle

After Herodotus comes a long transitional period that presents little evidence of metahistorical attitudes in Western history-writing, with one outstanding exception. Historical treatments of the Roman Empire are strongly slanted by a superstitious belief that its duration was predetermined by cosmic factors. The date of the founding of the city of Rome is a solid chronological datum: 747 BCE. This is the date reported by Cicero’s contemporary, the antiquarian Varro, and universally accepted by historians today. (Grant, 11) The Latin phrase, ab urbe conditis, "from the founding of the city," indicates the calendric benchmark widely used up to the time when the AD calendar was introduced in the 5th Century. Before calendars were computed from the birth of Jesus Christ, they were dated from the founding of Rome.

There is a remarkable factor in the Roman calendar. Technically, it is called a mytho-historical nexus, an event in which myth and history converge. It so happens that the historical event of founding the city of Rome, which is the seminal moment for the founding of the Roman Empire, coincides with a mythological event, a purely imaginary incident involving two non-historical characters. The mythical twins, Romulus and Remus, cannot be identified as historical persons, yet they are said to have founded Rome at that precise historical moment, 747 BCE.

The Roman legend is a hybrid script involving racial, familial and political elements. It states that Romulus and Remus were twins born of the Vestal Virgin, Rhea Silvia, and left to die in the wilds where they were found and raised by a she-wolf. Coming to manhood, the twins claim their birthright by the murder of their mother’s uncle, Amulius (familial element), who threatened to usurp the hereditary power of the kings of Alba (racial element). To instate the Roman royal lineage and found the Empire (political element), they choose the place sheltered by seven hills near the river Tiber, close to the spot where they had been abandoned as infants. Here the mythical event recorded in history transpires. "To consult the gods, Romulus chose the Palatine, while Remus took his station on the Aventine hill. It was Remus who saw the first augural sign: a flight of six vultures. But Romulus saw twelve, and to him fell the honor of founding the city." (Eliade, HRI, 2, 107ff)

Like all ancient peoples, the Romans took their omens very seriously. To a large extent, the Roman view of the founding of the Empire was coloured by the legacy inherited from mysterious predecessors, the Etruscans, known to have been masters of divination. "The prestige that the Etruscan’s methods of divination, the orientatio, and of the building of cities and sacred edifices enjoyed from the beginning of Rome indicates the cosmological structure of their theology and seems to explain their efforts to solve the enigma of historical time." (Eliade, ibid. ) At the moment Rome was founded, the archaic, non-historical view of life based in divination was uniquely merged with a sense of historical conscience, just then emergent in the proto-European mind-set. Astrology also contributed to this outlook through the theory of recurrent cataclysms believed to be due to astronomical factors. According to the astral fatalism of the time, every event comes, rather like a carton of milk today, with a pre-assigned expiration date. So did the Roman Empire.

From the seminal moment, there was considerable concern about the longevity of the empire founded by Romulus. Speculations were rampant. The entire population went through periodic panic attacks about the predicted term of expiration. The duration of the twelve vultures was calculated in dozens of ways, resulting in a range of different end-times. Although there was no universal agreement on the date the Empire would end, the belief that it was predestined to end was never shaken. It was widely believed that its demise would be due to estrangement from the guiding powers who oversee human affairs.

All this may look rather remote and foolish from our advanced viewpoint in the years post-2000 AD, but in metahistory we are careful not to dismiss archaic forms of perception too lightly. Is there anything to be learned from the chronological pattern of the twelve vultures? And what, if anything, can this divinatory fable reveal about the background of metahistorical inquiry?

Well, if the twelve vultures are read as twelve centuries, the duration of the Roman Empire extends from 747 BCE to 453 CE with the midpoint at 147 BCE. This timeframe encompasses with near perfect accuracy the period in which the Empire rose, peaked, and fell. Attila the Hun, who notoriously sacked Rome, died in 453 CE, right on time, and the invasion of Italy by the Vandals two years CE, 455 CE, is the date generally accepted by historians for the end of the Empire and the beginning of the Dark Ages. At the exact midpoint, 147 BCE, the Roman historian Polybius wrote a forty-volume "universal history" in which he argued that the Roman republic was the greatest manifestation of Cosmic Necessity on earth, yet he predicted that its days were numbered and it must ultimately decline due to cosmic law.

147 BCE was also the epoch of the great Jewish revolt in the occupied territory of Palestine. Zealots and other diehards of the Jewish liberation front united to resist Rome and establish a theocratic state ruled by the Messiah, he who would be King of the Jews. Although they were defeated, the apocalyptic script by which these revolutionaries were driven survived to become the core of Christian ideology and eventually, in the hundred years of the twelfth vulture, Christianity became the state religion of the Empire. Thus at the midpoint of the 1200 year cycle, its closure was predetermined.

Polybius demonstrates some metahistorical insight, but not true critical acumen. In his treatment of the fate of Rome, he assumes that some kind of cosmic pattern pervades human experience and determines the flow of historical events. This is not a novel assumption — far from it. The belief that a transhistorical pattern pervades history, a perennial feature of Asian philosophy and metaphysics, can also be found in Plato. The oracle of twelve vultures belongs to a long and rich tradition, but it comes to expression for the first time in the West in the historical timeframe of the Roman Empire. In addition to the two factors introduced by Herodotus — inventory and the comparative view — there is now a third factor that might be called the cosmic format of history.

Since the turn of the year 2000, interest in the cosmic format has been revived. This is no doubt due to reaching the millennial notch on the Christian calendar, but even more so to the implications of sacred timekeeping systems among the Maya, Aztec, Egyptians and Hindus. The Maya "end-time" of December 21, 2012 AD, continues to be a focus of wild debate. (I hope to treat this fascinating issue in an upcoming essay for VIEWS.) The system of World Ages timed by the Zodiac is the oldest construct of metahistorical imagination, and the most obscure! It represents the ultimate, all-encompassing version of a cosmic format for human experience.

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