Sortes Homericae

The Sortes Homericae (Latin for "Homeric lots"), a type of divination by bibliomancy, involved drawing a random sentence or line from the works of Homer (usually the Iliad) to answer a question or to predict the future. In the Roman world it co-existed with the various forms of the sortes, such as the Sortes Virgilianae and their Christian successor the Sortes Sanctorum.

There are numerous examples of lines from the Iliad being premonitions of things to come. Socrates reportedly dreamed of a certain verse from the Iliad, and interpreted it as foretelling the day of his execution.[1] Before the Battle of Pharsalus, a verse of Homer occurred to Brutus which suggested that Pompey would be defeated.[2][3] The emperor Marcus Opellius Macrinus (r. 217–218) is known to have used sortes Homericae properly speaking, where a verse was chosen by lot that supposedly foretold his fate that he would not last long on the imperial throne.[4]

The "Homer Oracle", or Homeromanteion, was a method of divination found in Greek Magical Papyrus 121. The oracle consisted of excerpts from Homer's poetry sorted by triple digits. After a series of ritual preparations, the user rolls a die three times, consulting a verse according to the resultant number.[5][6]

References

1. He dreamt of a woman quoting a slightly modified line from Achilles' speech (Iliad 9.363) - "In three days you would reach fertile Phthia", where Phthia (Φθίη) evokes the root of the noun φθίσις ‘decay, withering away’ and its related verb φθίω ‘decay, perish.’
2. Iliad 16.849 - "By the cruel crown of Fate I was undone / And by the rancor of Latona's son. This story is reported in Plutarch (Brutus 24.4-7), Appian (4.134.564), and Valerius Maximus (1.5.7)"
3. Latona's son was Apollo, and "Apollo" was the password of Pompey's forces on the day of the battle.Ziogas, Ioannis (November 2016). "Famous Last Words: Caesar's Prophecy on the Ides of March*". Antichthon. 50: 134–153. doi:10.1017/ann.2016.9. ISSN 0066-4774.
4. "Iliad 8.102 – Old man, these tough young fighters are too strong, / And age won't let you hold on very long."
5. Hernández, Raquel Martín (2013). "Using Homer for Divination: Homeromanteia in Context". CHS Research Bulletin 2 (1). Retrieved 5 August 2023.
6. "Papyrus 121". The British Library. British Library Board. Retrieved 5 August 2023.

Sources

• Gargantua and Pantagruel, Book 3, from "The Complete Works of Francois Rabelais", p285