"Yet it very quickly it grows into a monster that can bite a man in two."

"Exactly! That's why I've called you here, Gordianus-you have a nose for danger and a taste for finding the truth." She raised a finger. The gesture was so slight I barely noticed it, but an alert slave standing just outside the doorway hurried to her side.

"Bring Porsenna," said Calpurnia.

The slave departed without a sound. A few moments later, a gray-bearded man entered the room. He wore the yellow costume of an Etruscan haruspex. Over a bright tunic was a pleated cloak fixed at his shoulder with a large clasp of finely wrought bronze. The clasp was in the shape of a sheep's liver marked into numerous sections, with notations in the Etruscan alphabet etched into each section-a diviner's chart for locating omens amid the entrails. On his head the haruspex wore a high conical cap, held in place by a strap under his chin.

Haruspicy was the Etruscan science of divination. From ancient days, Rome's neighbors to the north worshipped a child-god called Tages, who had snakes for legs. Long ago, Tages appeared to an Etruscan holy man in a freshly plowed field, rising from the dirt and bearing books filled with wisdom. From those books the science of haruspicy was born.

Even before Rome was founded, the Etruscans were examining the entrails of sacrificed animals to predict every aspect of the future, from the outcome of great battles to the next day's weather. They were also adept at interpreting dreams and at finding meaning in various phenomena. Lightning, freakish weather, strange objects fallen from the sky, and the birth of monstrously deformed animals were all attempts by the gods to communicate their will to mankind.