Talk:Extispicy

The origin of extispicy
There was nonsense about the practice being inspired by Etruscans that I took out. Read Old Babylonian Extispicy by Ulla Jeyes. It's an incontrovertible fact that Babylonian extispicy precedes Etruscan haruspicy by centuries, and based on all indications, the Etruscans are indeed from Lydia or environs as Herodotus mentioned. --Glengordon01 02:47, 17 August 2006 (UTC) --

Glengordon can we have an alternative link to Old Babylonian Extispicy? The one you gave doesnt seem to work. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.168.240.199 (talk) 11:35, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

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Vitrubius says (Book I, Chapter IV, parragraph 9):

The precepts of the ancients, in this respect, should ever be observed. They always, after sacrifice, carefully inspected the livers of those animals fed on that spot whereon the city was to be built, or whereon a stative encampment was intended. If the livers were diseased and livid, they tried others, in order to ascertain whether accident or disease was the cause of the imperfection; but if the greater part of the experiments proved, by the sound and healthy appearance of the livers, that the water and food of the spot were wholesome, they selected it for the garrison. If the reverse, they inferred, as in the case of cattle, so in that of the human body, the water and food of such a place would become pestiferous; and they therefore abandoned it, in search of another, valuing health above all other considerations.