ucan, in his Pharsalia, describes such a lustration.[291] Tacitus gives a
like description, in his History,[292] of the ceremonies attending the
rebuilding the Capitol. On an auspicious day, beneath a serene sky, the
ground chosen for the foundation was surrounded with ribbons and flowers.
Soldiers, selected for their auspicious names, brought into the enclosure
branches from the trees sacred to the gods. The Vestal virgins, followed
by a band of children, sprinkled the place with water drawn from three
fountains and three rivers. The praetor and the pontiff next sacrificed a
swine, a sheep, and a bull, and besought Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva to
favor the undertaking. The magistrates, priests, senators, and knights
then drew the corner-stone to its place, throwing in ingots of gold and
silver.

The Romans, ever anxious about the will of the gods, naturalized among
themselves the Etruscan institution of the Haruspices. The prodigies
observed were in the entrails of animals and the phenomena of nature. The
parts of the entrails observed were the tongue, lungs, heart, liver, gall
bladder, spleen, kidneys, and caul. If the head of the right lobe of the
liver was absent, it was considered a very bad omen. If certain fissures
existed, or were absent, it was a portent of the first importance. But the
Romans were a very practical people, and not easily deterred from their
purpose. So if one sacrifice failed they would try another and another,
until the portents were favorable. But sceptical persons were naturally
led to ask some puzzling questions, such as these, which Cicero puts in
his work on Divination:[293] How can a cleft in a liver be connected, by
any natural law, with my acquisition of a property? If it is so connected,
what would be the result, if some one else, who was about to _lose_ his
property, had examined the same victim? If you answer that the divine
energy, which extends through the universe, directs each man in the choice
of a victim, then how happens it that a man having first had an
unfavorable omen, by trying again should get a good one? How happens it
that a sacrifice to one deity gives a favorable sign, and that to another
the opposite? But these criticisms only arrived after the old Roman faith
had begun to decline.

Funeral solemnities were held with great care and pomp, and festivals for
the dead were regularly celebrated. The dead father or mother was
accounted a god, and yet a certain terror of anc