- chapter 26: Haruspicy and augury –
material was transmitted westward, absorbed and transformed, in Greece, Italy, North
Africa, Spain and France. The trade lanes to Italy have been identifi ed, and they run
from the area dominated by the Neo-Assyrian kings, Esarhaddon (680–669 bce) and
Ashurbanipal (668–627 bce), great users of state divination,^64 to Cyprus, the Greek
islands and Euboea, and on to the Euboean colony of Pithekoussai on the Bay of Naples
and from there to Etruria. Along with the dazzling objects imported into Italy^65 came
other cultural cargo. Burkert argued that the scenario implies traveling charismatic
fi gures who may have come to visit local princes and thereby introduced well-developed
divination practices.^66 (The tale of Megales, the Phrygian seer who taught augury to
the Sabines,^67 though related at a considerably later date, provides an example of the
paradigm). Turfa hypothesizes exchange among individuals of the upper classes who
shared economic and political concerns (ship owners, diplomats, aristocrats, princes) that
would have facilitated transmission of such a fundamentally useful art as divination.^68
In addition, it is highly probable that fresh infusions into divinatory practice in Italy
came about in later centuries, especially in the Hellenistic period, when the international
ferment of ideas about divination and its relation to philosophical and scientifi c views of
the universe swept through intellectual circles in Rome. Cicero’s De divinatione provides
detailed references.
The similarities between the Babylonian and Etruscan traditions are well known and
often cited.^69 Both practiced the sacrifi ce of sheep in particular, both made models of
livers with signifi cant markings on them, both used a system of orientation to determine
which parts of the liver were favorable and which unfavorable.^70 Equally well known are
the differences. The Babylonian liver models seem to be records of readings, as may be
seen in an unusually detailed example in the British Museum (Fig. 26.5),^71 featuring a
grid in which blemishes from past readings were indicated, whereas the Piacenza liver,
the most revealing of the Etruscan liver models, seems to be a guide to the presence of
gods on the liver under consultation.
It is true that Babylonian liver reading also called for a determination of the presence
of the god; if the god was not present, the consultation was terminated. The terracotta
liver from Falerii (Fig. 26.6) presents some very precise details that show the direct
connection between the two traditions, but also reveal how a new and different system
was developed. A line running down the middle of the left lobe on the Falerii liver
Figure 26.6 Drawing of terracotta model of a liver from Falerii Veteres, area of the temple of Lo
Scasato. Circa 300 bce. Rome, Museo Nazionale di Villa Giulia. Drawing after Nougayrol, 1955, p. 513).