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Updated: May 10, 2025
A fabulous narrative is introduced here, that, when the king of the Veientians was offering sacrifice, the voice of the aruspex, declaring that the victory was given to him who should cut up the entrails of that victim, having been heard in the mine, incited the Roman soldiers to burst open the mine, carry off the entrails, and bring them to the dictator.
For Papirius the dictator, returning to Rome in order to take the auspices anew, in consequence of a caution received from the aruspex, left strict orders with the master of the horse to remain in his post, and not to engage in battle during his absence.
After he heard that he was an aruspex, being a man whose mind was not without a tincture of religion, pretending that he wished to consult him on the expiation of a private portent, if he could aid him, he enticed the prophet to a conference.
But when Fabius was taking the auspices, before he took his departure from Tarentum, the birds more than once refused approval. Also, on consulting the gods after sacrificing a victim, the aruspex forewarned him to be on his guard against hostile treachery and ambuscade.
It is reported that his mother, when formerly expiating a prodigy which had occurred in the family in behalf of this boy, who was an orphan, received an answer from the aruspex, stating, that "the highest office would come to him;" and that not recognising, at Capua, any ground for such a hope, exclaimed, "the state of the Campanians must be desperate indeed, when the highest office shall come to my son."
The aruspex is said to have shown to Decius the head of the liver wounded on the side relating to himself, in other respects the victim was acceptable to the gods; whilst Manlius obtained highly favourable omens from his sacrifice. "But all is well," says Decius, "if my colleague has offered an acceptable sacrifice."
Having called a diviner he proceeded to sacrifice. In the first victim the aruspex showed him the liver without a head; in the second the head appeared of unusual size, and all the other indications highly promising.
Some historians have recorded, that Marcellus had offered sacrifices on that day, and that in the first victim slain, the liver was found without its head; in the second, that all the usual parts were present, and that there was also an excrescence in the head. That the aruspex was not, indeed, pleased that the entrails should first have appeared mutilated and foul, and then too exuberant.
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