Harūspex
An Etruscan soothsayer, whose function it was to interpret the divine will from the
entrails of sacrificial victims, to propitiate the anger of the gods as indicated by lightning
or other marvels, and to interpret their significance according to Etruscan formulae. This art
had long been practised in Etruria, and was referred to a divine origin. In the course of the
republican era it found a home in the private and public life of the Romans, winning its way
as the native priesthoods, intrusted with similar functions, lost in repute. From the time of
the kings to the end of the Republic, haruspices were expressly summoned from Etruria by
decrees of the Senate on the occurrence of prodigies which were not provided for in the
Pontifical and Sibylline Books. Their business was to interpret the signs, to ascertain
what deity demanded an expiation, and to indicate the nature of the necessary offering.
It then lay with the priests of the Roman people to carry out their instructions. Their
knowledge of the signs given by lightning was only applied in republican Rome for the purpose
of averting the omen portended by the flash. (See
Puteal.) But under the Empire it was also used for consulting the lightning, either
keeping it off or drawing it down. From about the time of the Punic Wars, haruspices began to
settle in Rome, and were employed both by private individuals and state officials to ascertain
the divine will by examination of the liver, gall, heart, lungs, and caul of sacrificial
victims. They were especially consulted by generals when going to war. Their science was
generally held in high esteem, but the class of haruspices who took pay for their services did
not enjoy so good a reputation. Claudius seems to have been the first emperor who instituted a
regular
collegium of Roman haruspices, consisting of sixty members of
equestrian rank, and presided over by a
haruspex maximus, for the regular
service of the State. This
collegium continued to exist till the
beginning of the fifth century A.D. See Fraudsen,
Haruspices (Berlin,
1823); BouchéLeclercq,
Histoire de la Divination dans
l'Antiquité, four vols.
(Paris, 1879-82); and the articles
Augur;
Divinatio.