ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the cognitive process by which divinatory signs are brought to bear on practical situations. In western scholarship, divination has frequently been evaluated against scientific models of truth and prediction. Analyses such as Shaw's, which evaluate divination by its power to effect change, tend to emphasize the sensitivity of divinatory practices to the nuances of the societies in which they take place. It seems that in Herodotus, then, the ambiguity of the oracle can be an opportunity for rational exploration, a test of the moral or political character of the inquirer, and an emblem of the limits of human knowledge. However, Herodotus' tales of oracular ambiguity can also shed light on actual divinatory thinking in antiquity. Divination offered the Greeks a means of gaining foresight by synthesizing what they knew and what they suspected about their practical setting, but it was a foresight that could be confirmed only in hindsight.
