ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the role of animals within and across different forms of oracles, predictions, and omens. Parallels emerge not only in which animals are chosen as divinatory signs, but also in how animals and animal behaviour are deemed meaningful to humans wishing to gain a better understanding of past, present, or future events. Differences emerge in how this symbolic system infuses the individual strategies by which the supernatural was thought to reveal itself in ancient Greece. The chapter shows that there is a common symbolic system that informs the different ways in which the ancient Greeks sought out and interpreted divine signs. It illustrates that the practice of divination supports the larger picture of ancient Greek religion as a symbolic language based on the tripartite division of gods, humans, and animals that is also at play in other areas of the ancient Greek religious experience.
