Augury and Haruspicy

Augury in Roman public life

In Cicero’s dialogue De divinatione, read here in William Armistead Falconer’s Loeb translation of 1923, the speaker Quintus says that Romulus founded Rome in obedience to the auspices and was a skilled augur. He adds that after the kings were expelled no public business was conducted at home or on campaign without auspices (Book I, section 2). Quintus also describes the augur’s curved staff, the lituus, as the mark of the office (section 17). These are claims made by a character in a Roman dialogue, and they are not independent evidence for the earliest period.

Hanna Appel, writing in Res Historica in 2024, states that every Roman magistrate received the right to take auspices after election, and that Romans believed the gods revealed their will through signs that augurs explained. She distinguishes auspicium, which lay within the competence of magistrates, from augurium, which lay with augurs, while noting that augurs also took part in auspices. She cites the Roman lexicographer Festus for five classes of sign that augurs observed: from the sky, from birds, from the feeding of sacred chickens, from four-footed animals and from dire omens.

Etruscan haruspicy and its Roman adoption

Quintus in Cicero’s dialogue says the Romans took over the Etruscan art of soothsaying in its entirety, so that no kind of divination would seem to have been neglected (Book I, section 2). He attributes the Etruscan focus on entrails to a religious temperament and frequent sacrifice (section 93), and says that sons of leading families were set to study divination (section 92). This is a Roman account, not an Etruscan source.

Sarah Hammond’s 2009 University of Edinburgh master’s thesis on the iconography of the Etruscan haruspex describes the haruspex as a religious specialist who divined by inspecting the entrails of sacrificed animals, especially the liver. According to its abstract, the thesis studies images of haruspices on mirrors, cinerary urns and bronze figurines, and notes that English-language scholarship on the figure is limited.

The Piacenza liver and a Mesopotamian parallel

Belle van Rosmalen and Thomas van Gulik, writing in Hektoen International in 2024, describe a bronze model of a sheep’s liver held in the Musei Civici di Palazzo Farnese in Piacenza, Italy, and date it by its caption to about 100 BC. They report that its surface is divided into regions bearing engraved names of gods, with a band of sixteen smaller regions around the edge, and that the gallbladder carries the name of the water god Neptune. They interpret it as a teaching tool for students training to become haruspices.

A Wellcome Collection record describes a replica of a clay model of a sheep’s liver, the original held by the British Museum under object number 92668, as used to teach liver divination, called extispicy, at a Babylonian temple school about 2000 BC. This is a parallel from a different culture. The sources reviewed do not show a link between Mesopotamian and Etruscan practice, and none should be inferred.

Auspices, augury and omens

Appel separates two Latin terms. Auspicium refers to the taking of signs by a magistrate, and augurium to the work of the augurs, though augurs also took part in auspices. She also separates auspicia impetrativa, in which a specific question was put to the god and signs were sought, from auspicia oblativa, in which signs appeared without a prior request and could be seen by any citizen. In her account the announcement of the result of oblative signs belonged to the augurs, and it is not clear which rules they used to interpret them.

Haruspex, hepatoscopy and extispicy

Van Rosmalen and van Gulik call the reading of a sacrificed sheep’s liver by a haruspex hepatoscopy. The Wellcome record uses the term extispicy for liver divination in Babylonian teaching. The sources reviewed do not give an etymology for haruspex, so none is offered here.

Natural and artificial divination

In Cicero’s dialogue, divination is divided into a kind that depends on art and a kind that depends on nature. Natural forms are dreams and frenzy, while soothsaying by entrails, augury and astrology are counted as artificial (Book I, sections 11 to 12, 34 and 72). This is an ancient classification, and modern scholars use other frameworks, which the sources reviewed here do not cover. The Machipedia page Divination places this pair of practices within that wider family.

Related Machipedia pages include Sortilege and Bibliomancy, which covers the drawing of lots and the opening of texts at random, Geomancy, Astrology, and Oracle-bone Divination, which concerns the cracking of heated bones in Shang China. The sources used here do not compare these practices with augury or haruspicy, and similarity of purpose should not be read as shared origin.

What augury involved, in general terms

According to Appel, auspices were a form of communication with the gods in which a magistrate asked whether the gods approved an intended undertaking and then had to watch whether approval continued. She reports that signs from the sky, such as lightning and thunder, were ranked highest, and that observations of birds and of the sky were made in consecrated places. Cicero’s Quintus mentions the sacred chickens, noting that a favorable result was called tripudium solistimum (Book I, sections 27 to 28). This page does not describe procedures.

What haruspicy involved, in general terms

Van Rosmalen and van Gulik state that a haruspex read the future from the liver of a sacrificed sheep, and that the bronze model from Piacenza divides the organ into regions linked to gods. In Cicero’s second book, the speaker mentions as an example of how signs were read that a liver lacking its head was treated as the most unfavorable sign (Book II, section 32). The sources reviewed describe the practice only at this level, and this page gives no method.

Guidance for the state

The sources reviewed describe use in public life, not private consultation. Appel writes that Roman public acts, including elections, had to be preceded by communication with the gods through auspices. Quintus in Cicero’s dialogue says entrails were still used on important occasions, though less than before (Book I, section 16), and that two Roman commanders lost fleets after sailing against adverse auguries (section 29). These are advocates’ claims in a dialogue where the opposing view is also argued, and they are not evidence that the signs predicted outcomes.

What the sources do not cover

The sources reviewed do not cover claims about health, personal fortune or modern uses of augury or haruspicy, and no such claims are made here. Any modern group that uses the terms would need its own sources, which were not found in this review.

No tests of predictive accuracy found

No controlled studies, trials or systematic reviews testing whether augury or haruspicy predicts events were found. A PubMed search on 20 October 2026 combining haruspicy, augury, extispicy, hepatoscopy and ornithomancy with trial, validity and prediction terms returned four records, all of which use the word augury in a general sense, in medicine, finance or statistics, and none of which studies the historical practices. The research position of these practices is therefore historical and philological, not empirical.

Scholarship on how auspices were used

Appel examines whether auspices were manipulated at electoral assemblies in the late Roman Republic. She notes that Cicero says thunder halted assemblies but lightning on the left was otherwise a favorable sign, a remark that led many modern scholars to infer manipulation. She points to interpretive difficulties in the ancient sources and concludes that, given how often assemblies were held and how many officials were elected, manipulation of auspices in electoral practice seems unlikely. This is one scholar’s argument on a debated question.

Cicero’s critique of haruspicy

In Book II, Cicero argues that he sees no link between an ox’s liver and a person’s affairs, asks whether Etruscan, Elean, Egyptian and Carthaginian haruspices ever agreed, and compares the choice of victim to a throw of the dice (sections 12 and 29 to 37). He reports Cato’s remark that he wondered a soothsayer did not laugh on seeing another. He also states that divination contains a little error, a little superstition and a good deal of fraud (section 83). The same text records his view that haruspicy should be kept for reasons of political expediency and state religion (section 12).

Cicero on augury and the state

Cicero says that augural practice, discipline and the college were maintained out of respect for public opinion and the benefit of the state, and calls current rituals mere ghosts of true auspices (Book II, sections 70 to 71). He criticizes the favorable sign drawn from food falling from a chicken’s beak as contrived (sections 72 to 74), and says an exception for lightning at elections was made for political reasons. He was himself an augur, a point the sources reviewed here do not examine. Appel’s argument that manipulation was unlikely stands against the reading some scholars draw from his remark.

Historical scope and sacrifice context

The sources reviewed describe augury and haruspicy as historical Roman and Etruscan practices, and the haruspicy they describe depended on animal sacrifice. They report no clinical harms, because they do not treat these practices as health interventions. The sources reviewed do not cover any modern use, so no safety or training standard can be stated.

Care boundary

Nothing in the sources reviewed supports using omens in place of medical, mental health, legal or financial advice, and decisions of that kind should not be delayed or replaced on the strength of an omen. Cicero’s own view, as recorded in the dialogue, was that the practices did not offer reliable knowledge. No regulation or professional training standard for these practices was found.