Antiker Umgang mit Wahrscheinlichem: einige Beobachtungen in den dokumentarischen Quellen

The principles of probability theory were first discovered in the Middle Ages by the observation of dice games. According to the predominant view, in the Greco-Roman world probabilities were not calculated as such, but examples of a pragmatic awareness of the relative frequency of certain events have been identified. Until now, this view has been based on material drawn from ancient literary sources. Documentary sources, however, reveal a similar picture, and by using them we can gain insight into a much larger and more representative group of individuals, as well as into their problems and crises. The first part of this paper deals with the question whether there is in the so-called “Astragalkoine” a connection between canvassing a variety of prognoses and calculating probability by throwing knuckle-bones, i.e. were the most welcome answers connected with throws of high probability? The second part examines a number of documentary sources from different contexts (such as military supply, agriculture, and donations) which show that data were regularly collected over extended periods and were used as the basis for complex decision-making processes.