Speaker: Anthony Corbeill, University of Virginia In 56 BCE Cicero, orator and statesman, was enjoying his first Roman spring since returning from exile. April brought terrestrial rumblings north of Rome. The senate chose to investigate, enlisting Etruscan diviners to determine their significance. The priestly response was elucidated before the assembled Roman people by Publius Clodius, former tribune and engineer of Cicero's exile. The next day, Cicero offered the senate his reading of the same text in a speech combining harsh personal invective with incisive argumentation about determining divine will through natural phenomena. Cicero’s 'De haruspicum responsis' is unique in providing a contemporary account of how the senate assessed a prodigy, and it offers the only complete text written by a priestly body (here, the Etruscan 'haruspices'). My lecture will address the criteria used by the senate in deciding how natural phenomena might affect the Roman state