It is known as sponsorship to a contribution, usually financial, so that a certain action can be carried out. The sponsoring individuals, companies, or organizations are known as sponsors.
For example: “This morning, under the auspices of the local municipality, a new edition of the arts festival Cultura Sin Fronteras was held”, “The director of the channel told me that we need to get new sponsorships if we intend for our program to continue broadcasting”, ” We thank Mersop SA for sponsoring this event ”.
In a broader sense, as detailed in the dictionary of the DigoPaul, sponsorship is a sponsorship, protection or assistance that is provided. Suppose a club plans to host a non-profit sports event. To develop the event, it requires the financial assistance of companies or individuals willing to help. Finally, thanks to the sponsorships gathered that allow it to cover the expenses, the club manages to carry out the meeting.
Getting the sponsorship of companies and individuals to carry out a project is not easy, and requires a lot of promotional work. Nobody wants to invest their money in an unpromising or poorly exposed plan. On the other hand, many times the sponsorship hides the twisted intention of a favor in exchange that is not clearly expressed at the time of the agreement.
Sponsorship can also be an omen or a sign. In ancient times, the idea of patronage alluded to the practice that consisted of predicting the future based on supposed signs detected in birds. The soothsayers (augurs) observed the sky and, according to the birds they found and their behavior, made favorable or negative predictions. The rulers, in this framework, used to make decisions according to auspices.
This meaning can be seen directly in the etymology of the word, since it is made up of the Latin term used to refer to birds and the verb that we can translate as “see, look.” In a literal sense, we could say that auspicio means “the person who watches the birds.”
Among the best known auspices, one is attributed to the founding of Rome. The legend that Romulus and Remus agreed to define the exact location demonstrating their capacity as soothsayers. In this way, they sat down to observe the sky: Remus saw six vultures and Romulus twice. From the interpretation of this auspice they decided the site.
So, Romulus used the auspices to determine the point at which the foundations of Rome should be laid, and by means of a law he prohibited any official from admitting public positions or positions, or even the royal dignity itself, until there was no acquired favorable auspices.
Although the auspices as a fundamental resource to make decisions related to private and public businesses, and even the union in marriage, have undergone several changes throughout history, both in the methods used to obtain them and in the objects involved.
For example, one of the types of auspices was based on the trajectory marked by pikes, arrows and darts that the Romans threw through the air, which served to predict the end that a certain battle would have. Animal exploitation has been part of our history since time immemorial, and that is why it could not be absent from this divinatory discipline. In this context, one of the practices consisted of joining two animals and observing their behavior to determine luck: if they collided, then the future was not at all promising.
Some animals were fatally wounded, and patronage came from the behavior they had before they died, the way they collapsed, or the sounds they made with their last strength.
