ARUSPICINA. — This is the body of doctrines held by the haruspices, intended to interpret the will of the gods through the examination of the entrails of sacrificial victims; so that the term is equivalent to *extispicium*. Haruspicy is of unquestionably Etruscan origin, and the first part of the word is probably Etruscan as well. The true *hostiae consultoriae*, that is, the animals whose entrails were used for divination, were the ox and the sheep, though the latter especially.
Among the entrails, the liver occupied an almost exclusive place; the gall-bladder, the heart, and the lungs were also examined. In the examination of the liver, the haruspices had raised their skill to an extreme degree: they observed the colour of the fibres, the number of superficial fissures, and divided the organ by a complicated topography into many compartments, each of which had its own significance and was sacred to a different deity. This at least seems to be deducible from the well-known bronze liver of Piacenza. There are some points of contact between Etruscan haruspicy and the Babylonian, but we do not know whether these are due to direct influence.