augurship

plural augurships

1. historicalThe office (or period of office) of an augur in ancient Rome.

   1880, Anthony Trollope, Life of Cicero, 2004, Kessinger Publishing, page 5, The augurship would have bought him. “So pitiful,” says the biographer, “was the bribe to which he would have sacrificed his honor, his opinions, and the commonwealth!”

   1 more example

   1900, Marcus Tullius Cicero, Evelyn Shuckburgh (translator), Letters to Atticus, 2.5 (XXXI): To Atticus at Rome, Tusculum, April 59 BC, What I am expecting to hear from you is, what Arrius says, and how he endures being left in the lurch, and who are intended to be consuls—is it Pompey and Crassus, or, as I am told in a letter, Servius Sulpicius with Gabinius?—and whether there are any new laws or anything new at all; and, since Nepos is leaving Rome, who is to have the augurship—the one bait by which those personages could catch me!