It is about Etruscan religion, and especially funerary rites, that we are best informed. The Etruscans had the reputation of being the most addicted to religious ceremonial of any people of antiquity, and we learn much about Etruscans living from Etruscans dead. We know what sort of documentation to expect on religious matters from an Etruscan tomb, by extrapolating back from rites which the Romans believed they had inherited from Etruria, especially in the area of foretelling the future by examining the livers of animals (hepatoscopy) or observing the flights of birds (augury). One of the most curious surviving documents of Etruscan superstition is the bronze model of a sheep’s liver (Fig. 2.10) found in 1877 near Piacenza, on the upper Po, and now in the Civic Museum there. The liver is split in two lengthwise. From the plane surface thus provided three lobes project. The plane surface itself is subdivided into sixteen compartments (Fig. 2.11); over each compartment a god presides. The same sixteen subdivisions were used in the imaginary partition of the sky for augury, and the same principle governed the layout and orientation of cities like Marzabotto and probably Spina. The same superstition found in Babylonia directs our attention once more to the probable Near Eastern origin of the Etruscan ruling class. The priest would take his position at the cross-point of the intended _cardo_ and _decumanus_ of the city, facing south (we recall that the three-celled temple on the _arx_ at Marzabotto faces south). The half of the city behind him was called in Latin the _pars postica_ (posterior part), the part in front of him the _pars antica_ (anterior part); on his left was the _pars familiaris_ (the lucky side; hence thunder on the left was a good omen) on his right the _pars hostilis_ (unlucky). To the subdivision of the earth below corresponded a similar subdivision of the sky above; either was called in Latin (using a concept clearly derived from Etruscan practice) a _templum_, “part cut off,” a sacred precinct, terrestrial or celestial. From the Piacenza liver and the orientation of Marzabotto we can deduce both the orderliness of the Etruscan mind and the ease with which it degenerated into rigidity and superstition. For this deadly heritage the Etruscans apparently found in the Romans willing recipients; often, but not always, for old Cato said, “I cannot see how one liver-diviner can meet another without laughing in his face.” [Illustration: FIG. 2.12 Potentiometer profile. The high points on the graph show where hollowed tomb-chambers exist under ground. (ENIT, _Italy’s Life_, p. 106) ]