Other Roman Writers
Other Roman writers add breadth to the range of attitudes toward divine guidance. Propertius became more pious toward the end of his life, but his early poems are cynical and depict Jupiter as self-centered, spiteful, and deaf to prayer. Even so he mentions numerous forms of divination: astrology, dreams, omens, necromancy, casting lots, throwing dice, offering incense at household shrines. Ovid prefers “simple truth” and rails against popular religion and morality in The Art of Love and Metamorphoses. Livy detested the immorality and cynicism of the new generation represented by Ovid and the Epicurean Petronius, who in Satyricon was biting in his mockery of merchant-class pieties. But in his History of Rome Livy believes more in the tradition of Rome than in poetic stories of divine guidance. Lucan too largely dismisses divine interventions in history yet has a warm attitude toward Delphi’s holiness and accessibility.