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When Cicero tells his hearers what the gods intended to signify by making noises in the sky, and other divine voices, we feel sure that he was either hoaxing them who heard him or saying what he knew they would not believe. Previous to the speech as to the "aruspices," he had defended Sextius or Sestius, as he is frequently called on a charge brought against him by Clodius in respect of violence.
The business, however, of the Aruspices was not confined to the altars and sacrifices, they had an equal right to explain all other portents. The Senate frequently consulted them on the most extraordinary prodigies. The college of the Aruspices, as well as those of the other religious orders, had their registers and records, such as memorials of thunder and lightning, the Tuscan histories, etc.
The countenance of Arbaces seemed to lose all its rigid calm while the aruspices inspected the entrails, and to be intent in pious anxiety to rejoice and brighten as the signs were declared favorable, and the fire began bright and clearly to consume the sacred portion of the victim amidst odorous of myrrh and frankincense.
These prodigies were expiated by victims of the larger kind, according to the response of the aruspices; and a supplication was ordered to all the deities who had shrines at Rome.
Demonology The Devil, a most unaccountable personage Who is he? His predilection for old women Traditions concerning evil spirits &c. Magic and Magical rites. Jewish magi. On the several kinds of magic. Augury, or divinations drawn from the flight and feeding of birds. Aruspices, or divinations drawn from brute or human sacrifices. Divisions of divination by the ancients prodigies, etc.
Romulus, who founded the institution of the Aruspices, borrowed it from the Tuscans, to whom the Senate afterwards sent twelve of the sons of the principal nobility to be instructed in these mysteries, and the other ceremonies of their religion.
Among these were the Augurs or those who drew their knowledge of futurity from the flight, and various other actions of birds; the Aruspices, from the entrails of beasts; palmestry or the lines of the hands; points marked at random; numbers, names, the motions of a scene, the air, fire, the Praenestine, Homerian, and Virgilian lots, dreams, etc.
In the mean time many prodigies were announced; the greater part of which were little credited or even slighted, because individuals were the reporters of them, and also because, the Etrurians being now at war with them, they had no aruspices through whom they might attend to them.
Others state, that having gone out five hundred paces from the camp, at the instance of the aruspices, in order to expiate the prodigies before mentioned on unpolluted ground, he was cut off by two troops of Numidians who happened to be lying in ambush there. So different are the accounts respecting the place and manner of the death of so illustrious and distinguished a man.
Aruspices, called in from Etruria, declared this to be indeed a foul and ill-omened prodigy, which ought to be removed out of the Roman territory, and, being kept far from coming in contact with the earth, to be plunged into the deep. They shut it up alive in a chest, and carrying it away, threw it into the sea.
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