1 Earliest Rome

J, D I V I N A T I O N A N D D I V I N E R S
(15.1) While the senate was engaged on this business, Gnaeus Cornelius was called out
by his attendant; he left the temple, but shorrly returned with dismay in his face to tell
the senators that the liver of the ox he was sacrificing had dissolved. The victimarius 1
told him about this, but he could not believe what he had heard and therefore had the
water in which the entrails were being cooked poured out of the cauldron, and saw for
himself that the other entrails were still complete, but that the whole liver had been
consumed by some unspeakable corruption. The senators were appalled by this prodigy
and Petilius (whose victim's liver had lacked its lobe) added to the gloom by reporting
that he had sacrificed three more oxen and still not achieved favourable omens. The
senate bid him complete the sacrifice using rhe greater victims. 2
They tell that all the
other sacrifices achieved favourable omens, but that Petilius' sacrifice to Salus 3
178
never did. Then the consuls and praetors drew lots for the provinces.
1. For the victimarius. see 6.1a.
2. See 7.3a n.3. For the disappearance of vital organs at the moment of sacrifice, see 13-2.
3. Salus has not been mentioned before in Livy's account-only Jupiter; but the absence of
had
a satisfactory sacrifice to Salus would be particularly damaging and the senate may have
ordered it when things started to go wrong. Petilius was later defeated and killed on cam­
paign, amidst allegations of ritual mistakes: see Livy, History Y.U. 18.7-14.
7.4d The extispicy relieffivm Trajan's Forum (early second century A.D.)
This sculptured panel, now in Paris, came originally from Trajan's Forum at
Rome. In general, depictions of the examination of entrails are rare in Roman
art (despite taking place in some form after almost every sacrifice); so the sub-
-• ject may well have had a particular point in the context of the Forum. It is a
likely guess that the scene shows the sacrifice before the emperor Trajan ser our
on campaign, and that the entrails here being examined predicted the victory
that the Forum was built to celebrate.
Our photograph shows a plaster-cast of the relief, which assembles fragments
of the original currently held in different museums in Paris. Original
height, c. 3 m.; width 4.05 m.
See further: Wace 0907) 229-49; Ryberg (1955) 128-30; Koeppel (1985)
154-7, 204-12: D. E. E. Kleiner (1992) 223-4*.