n., pl., ha·rus·pi·ces (hə-rŭs'pĭ-sēz'), also a·rus·pi·ces (ə-rŭs'pĭ-sēz').
A priest in ancient Rome who practiced divination by the inspection of the entrails of animals.
[Latin.]
haruspex
Dictionary:
ha·rus·pex (hə-rŭs'pĕks', hăr'ə-spĕks')  also a·rus·pex
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(ə-rŭs'pĕks')
n., pl., ha·rus·pi·ces (hə-rŭs'pĭ-sēz'), also a·rus·pi·ces (ə-rŭs'pĭ-sēz').
A priest in ancient Rome who practiced divination by the inspection of the entrails of animals.
n., pl., ha·rus·pi·ces (hə-rŭs'pĭ-sēz'), also a·rus·pi·ces (ə-rŭs'pĭ-sēz').
A priest in ancient Rome who practiced divination by the inspection of the entrails of animals.
| Thesaurus: haruspex |
also aruspex
noun
- A person who foretells future events by or as if by supernatural means: augur, auspex, diviner, foreteller, prophesier, prophet, prophetess, seer, sibyl, soothsayer, vaticinator. See foresight.
| Obscure Words: haruspex |
| Wikipedia: Haruspex |
In Roman practice, inherited from the Etruscans, a haruspex (plural haruspices) was a man trained to practise a form of divination called haruspicy, hepatoscopy or hepatomancy. Haruspicy is the inspection of the entrails of sacrificed animals, especially the livers of sacrificed sheep and poultry. The rites were paralleled by other rites of divination such as the interpretation of lightning strikes, of the flight of birds (augury), and of other natural omens.
Being a specific form of the general practice of extispicy, haruspicy is not original to Etruscans nor Romans. Rather, it is now considered to have originated from the Near East where one finds Hittites and Babylonians performing similar rites with entrails and producing comparable stylized models of the sheep's liver.
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Babylonian haruspicy
The Babylonians were famous for hepatoscopy. The liver was considered the source of the blood and hence the base of life itself. From this belief, the Mesopotamians deemed the liver of special sheep the means to discover the will of the gods. The priest, called a bārû, was specially trained to interpret the 'signs' of the liver. The liver was divided into sections with each section representing a particular deity.
The Nineveh library texts name more than a dozen liver-related terms and before cuneiform writing was even deciphered, hints of the existence of Babylonian hepatoscopy were recorded in the Bible. One Babylonian clay model of a sheep's liver was found dated between 2050 and 1750 BC. The model was used for omen divination which was important to Mesopotamian medicine. This study was carried out by priests and seers who looked for signs in the stars, or in the organs of sacrificed animals, to tell them things about a patient’s illness. Wooden pegs were placed in the holes of the clay tablet to record features found in a sacrificed animal’s liver. The priest or seer then used these features to predict the course of a patient’s illness.
Haruspicy was part of a larger study of organs for the sake of divination, paying attention to the positioning of the organs. There are many records of different peoples using the liver and spleen of various domestic and wild animals to forecast weather. There are hundreds of ancient architectural objects, labyrinths composed of cobblestones in the northern countries that are considered to be a model of the intestines of the sacrificial animal, i.e. the colon of ruminants. The study of intestines was called "extispicy".
Etruscan haruspicy
The Etruscans were also well known for the practice of divining by the entrails of sheep. A bronze sculpture of a liver called the "Piacenza Liver" was discovered in 1877—and dating to c. 100 BC—near the town of Piacenza in northern Italy, complete with the name of regions marked on it which were assigned to various gods. It has been connected to the practice of haruspicy. By 1900, a professor of anatomy, Ludwig Stieda, sought to compare this artifact with a Mesopotamian one dated to a millennium earlier.
Etruscan haruspicy probably reached Etruria via the Hittites, perhaps because the Etruscans originated in Asia Minor. The art of haruspicy was taught in the Libri Tagetici, a collection of texts attributed to Tages, a childlike being who figures in Etruscan mythology, and who was discovered in an open field by Tarchon.
Roman haruspicy
Haruspicy continued to be practised throughout the history of the Roman Empire. The emperor Claudius was a student of Etruscan and opened a college to preserve and improve their art, which lasted until the reign of Theodosius I. Further evidence has been found of haruspices in Bath, England where the base of a statue was inscribed to honour a god for a haruspex.
In popular culture, Christopher Priest's story "I, Haruspex" set in a Europe on the brink of the Second World War deals with a haruspex fighting off an invasion of earth by the forces of Hell.
See also
References
- Walter Burkert, 1992. The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age (Thames and Hudson), pp 46-51.
- Derek Collins, "Mapping the Entrails: The Practice of Greek Hepatoscopy" American Journal of Philology 129 [2008]: 319-345
External links
- Haruspices, article in Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities
- Figurine of Haruspex, 4th Cent. B.C. Vatican Museums Online, Gregorian Etruscan Museum, Room III
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 | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Thesaurus. Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary Copyright © 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Obscure Words. © 2008 by Michael A. Fischer http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd. Read more |
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