augury

‘auspices’ is from the latin auspicium and auspex, literally “one who looks at
birds.

Pliny’s early piece where the artist had faithfully depicted the world as he
observed it: the grapes painted by Zeuxis so perfectly created an illusion of
reality, hanging there in the picture space, that the birds took them for the
real thing and tried to peck them off the picture. The artifact had become one
with reality and in this case achieved immortality in the description by the
Roman poet.
We know the story but not the picture;

We know grapes make wine. The roman belief that wine was a daily necessity made
the drink “democratic” and ubiquitous; in various forms, it was available to
slaves, peasants, woman and aristocats alike.

1 The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe. Yet
this seeing which comes before words, and can be quite covered by them , is not
a question of mechanically reacting to stimuli. (it can only be thought of in
this way if one isolates the small part of the process which concerns the eye’s
retina.) We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice. As a result
of this act, what we see is brought within our reach – though not necessarily
within arm’s reach. To touch something is to situate oneself in relation to it.
Close your eyes, move round the room and notice how the faculty of touch is like
a static, limited form of sight.) we never look at just one thing; we are always
looking at the relation between things and ourselves. Our vision is continually
active, continually moving, continually holding things in a circle around
itself, constituting what is present to us as we are.

1 ways of seeing, John Berger