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The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 3 (of 6) cover

The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 3 (of 6)

Chapter 74: CHAP. 71.—WHEN THE CUSTOM WAS FIRST ADOPTED OF EXAMINING THE HEART IN THE INSPECTION OF THE ENTRAILS.
By the Elder Pliny
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The work assembles systematic observations on animals, insects, and trees, combining natural history with practical notes. It surveys insect forms and habits, including bees, silk‑producing worms, spiders, and parasitic species, and discusses reproduction, classification, diseases, and useful products like honey and silk. It then examines animal anatomy in detail, limb by limb and organ by organ, comparing organs, vital functions, and bodily peculiarities across species. Later sections catalogue trees and exotic plants, describing aromatic gums, spices, frankincense, myrrh, and methods for producing and testing unguents and perfumes, and noting their uses and regions of origin.

CHAP. 71.—WHEN THE CUSTOM WAS FIRST ADOPTED OF EXAMINING THE HEART IN THE INSPECTION OF THE ENTRAILS.

On an examination of the entrails, to find a certain fatty part on the top of the heart, is looked upon as a fortunate presage. Still, however the heart has not always been considered as forming a part of the entrails for this purpose. It was under Lucius Postumius Albinus, the King of the Sacrifices,275 and after the 126th Olympiad, when King Pyrrhus had quitted Italy, that the aruspices began to examine the heart, as part of the consecrated entrails. The first day that the Dictator Cæsar appeared in public, clothed in purple, and sitting on a seat of gold, the heart was twice found wanting276 when he sacrificed. From this circumstance has risen a great question among those who discuss matters connected with divination—whether it was possible for the victim to have lived without that organ, or whether it had lost it at the very moment277 of its death. It is asserted that the heart cannot be burnt of those persons who die of the cardiac disease; and the same is said of those who die by poison. At all events, there is still in existence an oration pronounced by Vitellius,278 in which he accuses Piso of this crime, and employs this alleged fact as one of his proofs, openly asserting that the heart of Germanicus Cæsar could not be burnt at the funeral pile, in consequence of his having been poisoned. On the other hand, the peculiar nature279 of the disease under which Germanicus was labouring, was alleged in Piso’s defence.