March 12, 2003

Burning From the Inside

Ah, yes, it'd be timely now to warn of the approaching Ides of March (the 15th), which just happens to mark a famous day in history for extispicy.

An Etruscan haruspex named Spurinna came up with the phrase "Beware the Ides of March," the famous warning given to Julius Caesar in 44 B.C. that said the 15th of March would be very unlucky for him and he should not leave his home. These soothsayers, Caesar's official priests, had actually divined this omen by using extispicy as the method of augury. Two oxen had been sacrificed by the priests for guidance, but when they put the sacrificed animals into the ritual fire, the oxen were consumed by the fire completely and much too quickly than was normal. This abnormality the priests saw as a decidedly bad omen.

Did Caesar listen to his priests? Nope. He ventured out to the Senate's steps, where he was subsequently skewered himself -- almost perhaps to the point where his entrails could have borrowed for a little divination had anyone dared presume upon him right then. (Human entrail reading happens to be called anthropomancy. Hmm. How about reading a Caesar's entrails? Well, that was one divinatory method that they didn't apparently attempt .... at least that we know of.)

The methods and types of divination in Caesar's day were numerous.* Entrail-reading could take many forms and had many "subspecialities." For example, hieromancy or hieroscopy refers to the general practice of divination via sacrificing animals while the actual examination of the liver and entrails of the animal is known as haruspicy. Any abnormalities in the viscera observed were considered especially significant and interpreted as signs. And examination of just the liver itself was yet another divinatory method called hepatoscopy.

Extispicy was a fairly involved hieromantic ritual with several different parts to it. Extispicy rituals started with the actual sacrifice and evisceration of the animal, followed by the entrail examination, and after that the entrails and the rest of the animal's carcass would be put onto a ritual fire. (burnt offerings.) The extispieces would carefully examine the entrails at each point throughout the entire process for certain signs and omens. When the animal and its entrails were in the fire, any signs and omens observed as they burned would fall under the term pyromancy or maybe even more precisely, causimomancy -- the latter being the practice of watching how an object in the fire reacts. (It was considered a good omen when something typically combustible did not ignite -- thus, probably why the opposite effect of the two oxen burning to a crisp so alarmed Caesar's priests that long ago day.)

If the priests had wanted to look at and interpret the cracks in the scapulas of the animals' bones as they burned -- that would be called scapulomancy. And, finally, after the fire has burnt out, they could always have indulged in a little tephromancy -- divination by looking at ashes from burned sacrifices.

Yup. They had about as many different ways of slicing up the viscera, peering into it, and barbecuing it as we in the modern day have specialty cable channels.

So, take that as your omen this day -- to beware the Ides of the March and watch out for TVs. Or at least examine your TV carefully for any abnormalities or ill omens if you deign to watch it this wicked day .... it might be trying to tell you or trying to sell you something portentous.

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*Note for real sticklers: I am not sure if all of the descriptions of the entrail-reading divination "sub-specialties" I cited are completely definitive or exact -- as the various sources I consulted tend to vary a bit on some of them. Nor is this necessarily a historically accurate description of these divination methods as they had been practiced in Rome during Julius Caesar's day -- as some of the sources I used to devise the explanations and check on the terms were referring to the rituals as they had been practiced by the Etruscans or Babylonians.