Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/343

 same lines by Aetolian and Acarnanian peasants as it was by those ancient augurs to whose hand-books probably Psellus was indebted for his knowledge.

Another animal utilised in the same district for purposes of divination is the pig; but in this case the prophetic organ is not the shoulder-blade but the spleen. This is removed from the fresh carcase before the rest of the flesh is cut up or cooked in any way, and omens are taken from the roughness or discoloration of its surface. The questions which may be decided by this means are very various—the prospects of weather, of crops, and of vineyards, the success of journeys and other enterprises, the advisability of a contemplated marriage, and so forth. Of the exact details of the art I know even less than in the last case; the facts which I learned were these, that a smooth surface is a good omen, just as it was in the case of other internal organs in the time of Aeschylus, while certain roughnesses portend obstacles and difficulties in a journey or enterprise, and further that certain abnormal blotches of colour give warning of blight and mildew on crops and vines. Proficiency in the science, I was told, is commonest among the inhabitants of the low-lying cultivated or wooded districts of Acarnania where large herds of half-wild swine are kept; and hence it is natural that the predictions sought in this way are chiefly concerned with agricultural and social interests, whereas the omens obtained from the sheep's shoulder-blade by shepherds living solitary lives in the mountains deal with few issues other than the prospects of the flock. But this difference between the two methods of divination is circumstantial rather than essential; either method can, I believe, in the hands of experts be used for answering almost any questions.

Divination from the pig's spleen is, I think, undoubtedly ancient. It appears to be a solitary survival of the [Greek: splanchnoskopia], or 'inspection of entrails,' which in ancient Greece would seem to have been the commonest method of divining from the sacrificial victim. Among the animals embarrassed with prophetic entrails the pig indeed was not ordinarily reckoned; but Pausanias mentions that the people of Cyprus discovered its value, and