Foreshadowing is a great tool for writers aiming to add depth and nuance to their work. Today, guest blogger Tristan Zimmerman shares an interesting take on foreshadowing: omens, signs, and portents from Roman history. Tristan brings the fun facts of history to interactive storytelling (role-playing games) each week at Molten Sulfur Blog. He has also published several books to support game play in the ripped-from-the-history-book sandbox as well as game modules based on historical events and past cultures. I’ve reviewed Archive: Historical People, Places, And Events For RPGs, here. Molten Sulfur books are available at DriveThruRPG.
In this post, Tristan mines the fascinating history of Rome to inspire use of foreshadowing in fiction, be it subtle hints of what’s to come or outright prophecy, portents, and omens. If you’ve enjoyed John Hodgman’s I, Podius podcasts this spring (2020), which revisits the classic BBC miniseries from the 1970s, I, Claudius, some of Tristan’s stories might sound eerily familiar. He tells me he knew nothing about the TV show or the podcast when writing this post. (Coincidence? Serendipity? Synchronicity? You be the judge.)
Foreshadowing in History and Fiction
Today we’re going to talk about omens—
Tristan Zimmerman
I write material for people to use in tabletop role-playing games (RPGs), mostly taken from history and folklore. It’s a lot of fun, but there are some peculiar limitations on it. A great example is the storytelling device, foreshadowing. In a good campaign no one at the table knows where the story is going until it gets there, so it’s often impossible to develop expectations about upcoming events in the narrative.
But, by golly, since I’m writing for a totally different audience today, I’m going to tack in a totally different direction! Today we’re going to talk about omens—specifically, some of the best auguries and portents found in the Roman historian Suetonius’ biographies!
God-Controlled Events Foreshadowing The Future
Suetonius’ book The Twelve Caesars recounts the lives of the first eleven Roman emperors and the proto-emperor Julius Caesar. As a good and pious Roman, Suetonius believed uncritically that the gods encode cryptic truths about the future in birds’ behavior, unusual weather phenomena, and chance events.
Are any of the omens Suetonius recorded actually true? Who knows! But many are delightful, colorful, and might inspire foreshadowing in your narrative, depending on what kinds of stories you write and how thickly you like to lay on your hints.
All quotes are from the English translation by J.C. Rolfe (1913-1914), then edited for clarity.
Omens of Julius Caesar’s Murder
Suetonius’ first set of good omens are about the impending murder of Julius Caesar:
“Caesar’s approaching murder was foretold to him by unmistakable signs. A few months before, men at Capua demolished some tombs of great antiquity to get building material. In the tomb of Capys, the founder of Capua, they found a bronze tablet, inscribed in Greek: ‘Whenever the bones of Capys shall be moved, it will come to pass that a son of Troy shall be slain at the hands of his kindred, and presently avenged at heavy cost to Italy.’ …
Shortly before Caesar’s death, the herds of horses, which he had dedicated to the river Rubicon when he crossed it and had let loose without a keeper, stubbornly refused to graze and wept copiously.
When Caesar was offering sacrifice, the soothsayer Spurinna warned him to beware of danger, which would come not later than the Ides of March. On the day before the Ides of that month, a little bird called the kingbird flew into the Hall of Pompey with a sprig of laurel, pursued by others of various kinds, which tore it to pieces in the hall. … When the Ides came, after several animal victims had been sacrificed and ill omens found in their entrails, Caesar entered the Senate House in defiance of portents, laughing at Spurinna and calling him a false prophet because the Ides of March had come without harm. Spurinna replied that they had come, but they had not yet gone.”
And we all know how well that went for Julius Caesar.
Augustus’ Greatness Foretold
Moving on to Caesar’s handpicked successor, Augustus:
“In ancient days, when a part of the wall of Velitrae had been struck by lightning, the prediction was made that a citizen of that town would one day rule the world. The prediction drove the people of Velitrae to make war on the Roman people and to keep fighting until they were almost destroyed. Long afterward, it became clear the omen was actually talking about Augustus.”
Young Augustus
Suetonius dutifully gives us several portents of the young Augustus’ impending greatness:
“When Augustus’ father was leading an army through remote parts of Thrace, he consulted priests in the grove of Father Liber about his son. With barbarian rites, they poured wine on the altar, and a pillar of flame sprang forth that rose above the temple roof and mounted to the very sky. Such an omen had befallen no one save Alexander the Great, when he offered sacrifice at the same altar.
“Moreover, the very next night, Augustus’ father dreamt that his son appeared to him in a guise more majestic than that of mortal man, with the thunderbolt, scepter, and insignia of Jupiter First and Best, wearing a crown begirt with rays and mounted upon a laurel-wreathed chariot drawn by twelve horses of surpassing whiteness.
“As soon as Augustus began to talk, it chanced that the frogs were making a great noise at his grandfather’s country place. He bade them be silent, and they say that since then no frog has ever croaked there.
“As Augustus was lunching in a grove at the fourth milestone on the Campanian road, an eagle surprised him by snatching his bread from his hand. After flying to a great height, the eagle dropped gently down again and gave the bread back.
“When Augustus was assuming the gown of manhood, his senatorial tunic split at the seams on both sides and fell at his feet. Some saw this as a sign that the Senatorial order would one day be brought to his feet.”
Politicians Spin The Omens
As a grown man, Augustus played with omens as it suited him:
“When he was sacrificing at Perusia without getting a favorable omen, he ordered more animal victims brought in the hopes of getting a better result. But the enemy made a sudden sally and carried off all the equipment of the sacrifice. The soothsayers agreed that all the dangers and disasters the sacrifices promised would fall on the heads of those who now possessed the entrails; and so it turned out.”
As with his adoptive father before him, Augustus’ death was supposedly heralded by omens:
“A flash of lightning melted the first letter from the inscription on one of his statues [that of his title, ‘Caesar’]. As the letter was ‘C’ [one hundred in Roman numerals], this was interpreted to mean he would live only a hundred more days. As the part of the word that was left, ‘aesar’, is the word for ‘god’ in the Etruscan tongue, it was held that he would be numbered with the gods after his death.”
Ominous Tiberius
The next emperor, Tiberius, was Augustus’ adopted son, and so had a different paternal line with plenty of omens in it:
“Tiberius’ ancestor Claudius Pulcher was to fight a sea battle off Sicily. When the sacred chickens would not eat before he took the omens, he threw them into the sea, saying they might drink, since they would not eat! He lost the battle.”
Suetonius gives us an interesting reverse omen for Tiberius’ death. Tiberius spent most of his reign away from Rome in his pleasure palace on Capri. He only returned twice. The second time, he rode to within seven miles of Rome, then retreated because of a portent:
“He had among his pets a serpent, and when he was going to feed it from his own hand, as his custom was, he discovered that it had been devoured by ants. Then a soothsayer warned him: ‘Beware the power of the mob.’ So, he went back in haste to Campania, and fell ill at Astura.”
That illness later killed him; he probably wouldn’t have caught the fatal disease if he’d gone on to Rome. In avoiding a prophecy of his death, he stumbled into it, which is a very Classical thing to do.
Caligula’s Self-Fulfilled Prophecy
A similar bit of prophecy-driven history comes from Suetonius’ biography of Tiberius’ successor, Caligula:
“He bridged the gap between Baiae and the mole at Puteoli, a distance of about thirty-six hundred paces, by bringing together merchant ships from all sides and anchoring them in a double line. Afterwards a mound of earth was heaped upon them and fashioned in the manner of the Appian Way. Over this bridge he rode back and forth for two successive days. … When I was a boy, I used to hear my grandfather say that the reason for the work, as revealed by the emperor’s confidential courtiers, was that Thrasyllus the astrologer had declared to Tiberius, when he was worried about his successor, that Caligula had no more chance of becoming emperor than of riding about over the Gulf of Baiae with horses.”
Foreshadowing Nero’s Death
Skipping over Caligula’s delightful successor Claudius, the next emperor, Nero, suffered terrifying dreams as the omen of his death:
“He was steering a ship in his sleep and the helm was wrenched from his hands. He was then dragged by his wife Octavia into thickest darkness, where he was covered by a swarm of winged ants. Now he was surrounded by the statues of the nations in Pompey’s theatre, which blocked his escape. A favorite horse changed into an ape, while its head, which alone remained unaltered, gave forth tuneful neighs. The doors of the Mausoleum flew open, and a voice summoned him inside by name.”
Year of The Four Emperors
The deeply unpopular Nero was overthrown in a civil war that lasted through the “Year of the Four Emperors,” as emperor toppled emperor in rapid-fire succession. The first, Galba, was a provincial governor who was considering whether to rise up against Nero when he experienced a most intriguing omen:
“A ship from Alexandria loaded with arms arrived at Dertosa without a pilot, without a single sailor or passenger, removing all doubt in anyone’s mind that the war was just and holy and undertaken with the approval of the gods.”
Galba’s overthrower, Otho, paid insufficient attention to the omens when he marched on the man who would topple him, Vitellius:
“When he first left the city, he was delayed by the flooding of the Tiber River. Then when he reached the twentieth milestone, he found the road blocked by fallen buildings.”
Omens Lend a Hand to Vespasian’s Dynasty
Of Vitellius, Suetonius tells us little. But his overthrower, Vespasian, gets a full suite of favorable omens. That bit of foreshadowing should come as no surprise; Vespasian founded a new dynasty that ruled for thirty years as was generally well-regarded. The best of these omens occurred while Vespasian was still a fairly minor government official:
“Once when he was taking breakfast, a stray dog brought in a human hand from the crossroads and dropped it under the table.” [The hand was a symbol of power in Rome.]
Vespasian was succeeded in turn by two of his sons. The first, Titus, died of natural causes. The second, Domitian, was assassinated. Before Domitian’s death,
“The inscription on the base of a triumphal statue of his was torn off in a violent tempest and fell upon a neighboring tomb.”
Visit Tristan Zimmerman each week at Molten Sulfur Blog and his Patreon page.
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