house to meet a raven, that the sudden death of a person from epilepsy at a public meeting was a sign to break up the assembly.
Among the other means of discovering the will of the gods were the casting of lots, oracles of Apollo (in the hands of the college sacris faciundis), but chiefly the examination of the entrails of animals slain for sacrifice (see Omen). Anything abnormal found there was brought under the notice of the augurs, but usually the Etruscan haruspices were employed for this. The persons entitled to ask for an expression of the divine will on a public affair were the magistrates. To the highest offices, including all persons of consular and praetorian rank, belonged the right of taking auspicia maxima; to the inferior offices of aedile and quaestor, the auspicia minora; the differences between these, however, must have been small. The subjects for which auspicia publica were always taken were the election of magistrates, their entering on office, the holding of a public assembly to pass decrees, the setting out of an army for war. They could only be taken in Rome itself; and in case of a commander having to renew his auspicia, he must either return to Rome or select a spot in the foreign country to represent the hearth of that city. The time for observing auspices was, as a rule, between midnight and dawn of the day fixed for any proposed undertaking. In military affairs this course was not always possible, as in the case of taking auspices before crossing a river. The founding of colonies, the beginning of a battle, the calling together an army, the sittings of the senate, decisions of peace or war, were occasions, not always but frequently, for taking auspices. The place where the ceremony was performed was not fixed, but selected with a view to the matter in hand. A spot being selected, the official charged to make the observation pitched his tent there some days before. A matter postponed through adverse signs from the gods could on the following or some future day be again brought forward for the auspices. If an error (vitium) occurred in the auspices, the augurs could, of their own accord or at the request of the senate, inform themselves of the circumstances, and decree upon it. A consul could refuse to accept their decree while he remained in office, but on retiring he could be prosecuted. Auspicia oblativa referred mostly to the comitia. A magistrate was not bound to take notice of signs reported merely by a private person, but he could not overlook such a report from a brother magistrate. For example, if a quaestor on his entry to office observed lightning and announced it to the consul, the latter must delay the public assembly for the day.
On the subject generally, see A. Bouché-Leclercq, Histoire de la divination dans l’antiquité (1879), and his articles, with bibliography, in Daremberg and Saglio’s Dictionnaire des antiquités, also articles “Augures,” “Auspicium,” by Wissowa in Pauly’s Realencyclopädie (II. pt. ii., 1896), and by L. C. Purser (and others) in Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (3rd ed., 1890). (See also Divination, Omen, Astrology, &c.)
AUGUST (originally Sextilis), the sixth month in the pre-Julian Roman year, which received its present name from the emperor Augustus. The preceding month, Quintilis, had been called “July” after Julius Caesar, and the emperor chose August to be rechristened in his own honour because his greatest good fortune had then happened. In that month he had been admitted to the consulate, had thrice celebrated a triumph, had received the allegiance of the soldiers stationed on the Janiculum, had concluded the civil wars, and had subdued Egypt. As July contained thirty-one days, and August only thirty, it was thought necessary to add another day to the latter month, in order that the month of Augustus might not be in any respect inferior to that of Julius.
AUGUSTA, a city and the county-seat of Richmond county, Georgia, U.S.A., at the head of steamboat navigation on the Savannah river, 132 m. N.W. of Savannah by rail and 240 m. by river course. Pop. (1890) 33,300; (1900) 39,441, of whom 18,487 were negroes and only 995 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 41,040. Augusta is served by the Southern, the Augusta Southern (controlled by the Southern), the Atlantic Coast Line, the Charleston & Western Carolina (controlled by the Atlantic Coast Line), the Georgia and the Central of Georgia railways, by an electric line to Aiken, South Carolina, and by a line of steamers to Savannah. The city extends along the river bank for a distance of more than 3 m., and is connected by a bridge with Hamburg, and with North Augusta, South Carolina, two residential suburbs. Augusta is well known as a winter resort (mean winter temperature, 47° F.), and there are many fine winter homes here of wealthy Northerners. There are good roads, stretching from Augusta for miles in almost every direction. In North Augusta there is a large hotel, and there is another in Summerville (pop. in 1910, 4361), 2½ m. N.W., an attractive residential suburb and winter resort, in which there are a country club and a large United States arsenal, established in 1831. Broad Street is the principal thoroughfare of Augusta, and Greene Street, with a park in the centre and flanking rows of oaks and elms, is the finest residential street. Of historical interest is St Paul’s church (Protestant Episcopal); the present building was erected in 1819 and is the third St Paul’s church on the same site. The first church was “built by the gentlemen of Augusta” in 1750. In the crypt of the church General Leonidas Polk is buried; and in the churchyard are the graves of George Steptoe Washington, a nephew of George Washington, and of William Longstreet, the inventor. Among the city’s principal buildings are the Federal building, the Richmond county court house, the Augusta orphan asylum, the city hospital, the Lamar hospital for negroes, and the buildings of Richmond Academy (incorporated in 1783), of the Academy of the Sacred Heart (for girls), of Paine’s Institute (for negroes), of Houghton Institute, endowed in 1852 to be “free to all the children of Augusta,” and of the medical school of the university of Georgia, founded in 1829, and a part of the university since 1873. A granite obelisk 50 ft. high was erected in 1861 as a memorial to the signers for Georgia of the Declaration of Independence; beneath it are buried Lyman Hall (1726–1790) and George Walton (1740–1804). There are two Italian marble monuments in honour of Confederate soldiers, and monuments to the Southern poets, Paul Hamilton Hayne and Richard Henry Wilde (1789–1847).
In commerce and manufacturing, Augusta ranks second among the cities of Georgia. As a centre of trade for the “Cotton Belt,” it has a large wholesale and retail business; and it is an important cotton market. The principal manufacture is cotton goods; among the other products are lumber, flour, cotton waste, cotton-seed oil and cake, ice, silk, boilers and engines, and general merchandise staples. Water-power for factories is secured by a system of “water-power canals” from a large dam across the Savannah, built in 1847 and enlarged in 1871; the principal canal, owned by the city, is so valuable as nearly to pay the interest on the municipal debt. In 1905 the value of the city’s total factory product was $8,829,305, of which $3,832,009, or 43·4%, was the value of the cotton goods. The principal newspaper is the Augusta Chronicle, founded in 1785.
Augusta was established in 1735–1736 by James Edward Oglethorpe, the founder of Georgia, and was named in honour of the princess of Wales. The Carolina colonists had a trading post in its vicinity before the settlement by Oglethorpe. The fort, built in 1736, was first named Fort Augusta, and in 1780, at the time of the British occupation, was enlarged and renamed Fort Cornwallis; its site is now marked by a Memorial Cross, erected by the Colonial Dames of Georgia in the churchyard of St Paul’s. Tobacco was the principal agricultural product during the 18th century, and for its culture negro slaves were introduced from Carolina, before the restrictions of the Georgia Trustees on slavery were removed. During the colonial period several treaties with Indians were made at Augusta; by the most important, that of 1763, the Choctaws, Creeks, Chickasaws, Cherokees and Catawbas agreed (in a meeting with the governors of North and South Carolina, Virginia and Georgia) to the terms of the treaty of Paris. At the opening of the American War of Independence, the majority of the people of Augusta were Loyalists. The town was taken by the British under Lieut.-Col. Archibald Campbell (1739–1791) in January 1779, but was evacuated a month later; it was the seat of government of Georgia for almost the entire period from the capture of Savannah in December 1778 until May 1780, and was then abandoned by the Patriots and was occupied chiefly by Loyalists under Lieut.-Col.
