ABSTRACT
Far more is known about the private religious entrepreneurs present in Rome in the Middle and Late Republic than is known about this aspect of religious life in any other Hellenistic city. It is clear that at any given time in the period Rome contained a substantial number of persons of indeterminate origin who offered religious services of various kinds. Many of them were men or women expert in divination. The varied cast of religious experts with whom Periplectomenus' wife in Plautus' Miles gloriosus consorts and whom she feels obliged to pay on the 19th of the month have already been mentioned. 1 There are not only the woman who performs incantations (praecantrix), the woman who interprets dreams (coniectrix), the inspired prophetess (hariola), the woman who inspects entrails (haruspica) and finally, the woman who observes the sky. It is conspicuous that they are female. They have their male counterparts: in a tragedy by Ennius, a contemporary of Plautus, a character complains about ecstatic prophets (superstitiosiprophetae) and shameless inspired seers (harioli) who are either idle or insane or driven by need; they are men who do not know their own way, yet propose to show the way to others and who promise wealth to those from whom they seek a drachma as their fee. 2 It is amongst persons of this type that many of Rome's magic-workers will have been found.
