The whole process of this mysterious rite is given in the 29th book of Ammianus Marcellinus.
Extispicium,
(From exta and spicere, to view, consider.)
The name of the officer who shewed and examined the entrails of the victims was Extispex.
This method of divination, or of drawing presages relative to futurity, was much practised throughout Greece, where there were two families, the Jamidæ and Clytidæ, consecrated or set apart particularly for the exercise of it.
The Hetrurians, in Italy, were the first Extispices, among whom likewise the art was in great repute. Lucan gives us a fine description of one of these operations in his first book.
Gastromancy.
This species of divination, practised among the ancients, was performed by means of words coming or appearing to come out of the belly.
There is another kind of divination called by the same name, which is performed by means of glasses, or other round transparent vessels, within which certain figures appear by magic art. Hence its name, in consequence of the figures appearing as if in the belly of the vessels.