Sortes Homericae
The Sortes Homericae, a type of divination by bibliomancy, involved drawing a random sentence or line from the works of Homer to answer a question or to predict the future. In the Roman world it co-existed with the various forms of the sortes, such as the Sortes Virgilianae and their Christian successor the Sortes Sanctorum.
There are numerous examples of lines from the Iliad being premonitions of things to come. Socrates reportedly dreamed of a certain verse from the Iliad, and interpreted it as foretelling the day of his execution. Before the Battle of Pharsalus, a verse of Homer occurred to Brutus which suggested that Pompey would be defeated. The emperor Marcus Opellius Macrinus is known to have used sortes Homericae properly speaking, where a verse was chosen by lot that supposedly foretold his fate that he would not last long on the imperial throne.