The Etruscan by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 10th, 2022 in Stories

During the winter I moved among the people of Rome, even among the disreputable elements of Suburra, that I might learn human nature. My journey had taught me not to be too careful of my company or to choose my friends because of the possible benefit that might result. I sought only people to whom I could feel close, and they could be found just as easily among the poor as among the nobles.

In a Suburran brothel I found myself playing dice with the bookkeeper of an iron ore ship from Populonia. The Roman smiths needed much iron that winter and when the bookkeeper had lost his money he tore his braid and thoughtlessly offered me a free voyage to Populonia for just one more throw. I won that also, and he swore to fulfill his promise since he well knew that he would not be welcome in Suburra if he failed to pay his gaming debts.

“I have brought difficulties upon myself,” he said, “but I have probably deserved them because of my frivolity. At least you must wear Etruscan clothes and try to act like an Etruscan if you possibly can. I shall take you to Populonia as I promised but the rest is in your own hands. At the present time the custodians of iron ore do not welcome strangers.”

I consoled him and indicated that I could speak Etruscan effortlessly although I had previously pretended to know little, and returned the money that I had won from him so that he might seek solace in wine and in the company of the girls of the house. When I greeted him at his ship the following morning I was clothed in my beautiful Etruscan attire with the peaked cap. He was happy to see that I was not an unsig-nificant person, declared that I could pass for an Etruscan as well as anyone else and assured me that he would keep his promise. But storms were raging at sea, and his commander wanted a return cargo from Rome. The Senate had promised to exchange the iron for ox hides but was laggard about it, as was its custom, and haggled about the price.

It was therefore spring before we could leave, and we sailed from the mouth of the Roman river just two days before the arrival of the Volscians. Pillars of smoke along the shore told of their coming, but having sailed down the river in time we caught a favorable wind and managed to elude them.

When we had sailed by Vetulonia and seen the Etruscans’ famous ore island to the left of us, we reached the seamarks of Populonia and were escorted to the harbor by a guardship to make certain that the cargo or passengers were not discharged earlier. We passed many barges loaded to the gunwales which sought with sail and oars to reach the port of discharge. Along the shore behind sturdy unloading bridges were dark red hills of ore and beyond them puffs of smoke rose from the smelting pits.

When the stern of our ship had been fastened and the steps lowered, iron-clad guards surrounded us. Never before had I seen such a dismal sight, for their smooth armor bore not a single decoration or emblem. Even their shields were smooth, and their round helmets extended to the shoulders of their breastplates. Square openings had been cut into the helmet for the eyes and mouth so that the guards no longer resembled people or soldiers but were inhuman as beasts or hard-shelled animals. Their spears and swords likewise were without a single ornament.

Just as simply clothed were the gray-robed inspectors who climbed unarmed onto the vessel and to whom the commander showed his sailing tablet with the seals from the various ports to indicate his route. The bookkeeper presented the cargo list and thereafter every man was called before the inspectors to give an account of himself.

Each had to extend his hands and the inspectors looked at them to see whether they actually were the calloused hands of one who had spent a lifetime at the oars or hawsers. Only then they looked into the man’s eyes and cared little for his nationality so long as he was an ordinary sailor who asked for no more in a port than a measure of wine and a cheap woman as his bed companion.

As a passenger I was last. The sight of the strict inspection made me glad that I had not attempted to reach Populonia as a sailor but was dressed in my Tarquinian attire with my braided hair on my shoulders.

To my amazement the inspector looked at my face and then glanced at his companions. The three gruff men stared at me, then the youngest of them raised his hand to his mouth. But his superior looked at him sharply and frowned, then took a simple wax tablet, impressed on it the head of Gorgon with his seal and extended it to me.

“Write your name on it, stranger. You may come and go in our city as you wish.”

I saw an understanding flicker in his eyes and suspected that he had known in advance of my coming. Fearing that they wanted to lead me into a trap so that they might later imprison and condemn me for excessive curiosity, I therefore thought it wisest for me to reveal my plans immediately.

“I would also like to travel to the ore island to see the famous mines and visit the forests here on the mainland from which you obtain the coal for refining the ore.”

The inspector lifted his slanting eyebrows and remarked impatiently, “Your tablet bears the picture of our Gorgon as its emblem. Just write on it the name that you wish to use.”

Surprised, I tried to explain, “I am Turnus from Rome,” but the inspector interrupted me and said, “I have asked nothing. Never claim that I have inquired your name or your family or your city.”

Such treatment was amazing. The bookkeeper’s mouth dropped open and he began looking on me with new eyes. I myself could not understand why I was treated so favorably in a city which was guarded from strangers as carefully as were the sea charts and war port of Carthage.

As a city Populonia was like its guards, bleak, severe and adapted to its purpose. Its people considered drudgery an honor and the smoke from the smelting pits had blackened the painted cornices of the houses. Gorgon was the emblem of the city and Sethlans with his sledge-hammer the god, so that in his temple Sethlans was in the center and Tinia and Uni in each side chamber. That is how greatly the residents of Populonia respected the god of iron.

I sailed in an empty ore vessel to the ore island of Elba, where I saw the mines and the as yet unbroken ore fields, and with my own eyes confirmed that such endless ore reserves and pure iron could be found nowhere else in the world. But I was even more curious about the temple of lightning of which I heard. It was situated near the ore fields atop the highest hill and was surrounded by hollow bronze statues worn green with age which represented the twelve cities of the Etruscan league.

Here, where the thunderstorms raged the fiercest and lightning flashed the brightest, the most experienced lightning diviner studied its omens for the Etruscan cities and nations. For that purpose a flat stone bore a bronze shield that was quartered and orientated like the vault of heaven and divided into sixteen minor parts inhabited by sixteen deities whose signs only the priests could interpret. In that temple those who sought to become lightning priests received their final secret knowledge and consecration after ten years of study in their own cities under the guidance of elders. But innate ability and perception were of even greater importance than study and tradition and endless precedents. A youth who possessed an apparent gift for studying lightning could be spared ten years of study on the basis of proven perception and could be consecrated at the age of eighteen.

During generations many a candidate for priesthood had been killed by lightning. But if he survived he needed no other consecration and was considered more holy than the other priests.

Divination by lightning was not done for individuals at that modest wooden temple. The omens concerned entire nations and cities and warned them about coming disasters or foretold good and fruitful years. After the short-haired candidates had shown me the temple and related the stories of the bronze statues, the temple elder himself received me and looked at me keenly. He did not say much but offered me bread baked in ashes and water to drink, and urged me to come to the temple during the next storm if I dared.

I did not have to wait many days before dark clouds began to roll from the mountains in the east toward the sea. So hastily did I climb the winding path to the hilltop that I bruised my knee on a rock and brambles scratched my legs and arms. I saw the sea foam and the distant lightning flash over Populonia and Vetulonia.

Noticing how eagerly I hurried to the temple the elder smiled the mysteriously beautiful smile of the wise and said that there was no hurry as yet. He led me into the temple and soon we heard the rattle of rain on the roof and the rush of water down the clay gutterspout and through the lions’ maws at all twelve corners. Blue flashes now and then illuminated the interior of the temple and the black-painted face and white eyeballs of the god of lightning.

When the moment had arrived the elder bade me undress, donned a rain collar and head covering, and took me into the rain. The sky was black above us but he asked me, naked as I was, to seat myself at the center of the bronze shield facing northward while he himself stood behind me. I was wet through and before me forks of lightning crossed one another as they struck the ore fields of the island. Suddenly everything flashed white and a bolt that covered the entire northern sky leaped from the clouds and back again in a triumphant arc that in my dazzled eyes formed a complete circle against the heavens without touching the ground. At the same moment a crash of thunder deafened my ears.

The old man placed his hands on my shoulders from the rear and said, “The god has spoken.”

Trembling with cold and shock, I followed him back to the temple where with his own hands he dried me and gave me a heavy woolen cloak to wear. But still he said nothing and made no prediction, merely looked at me affectionately as a father at his son.

Nor did I ask anything although something compelled me to tell him of my youth and how I had found myself at the foot of a lightning-cleft oak near Ephesus. I also confessed my most secret crime, the burning of the temple of Cybele, and when I had told him everything I bowed my head, awaiting his judgment.

But he laid a protecting hand on my head and declared, “What you have done you had to do. You need not fear the dark goddess, you fair visitor on earth. We Etruscans do not, like the Greeks, consider criminal a man who has been struck by a thunderbolt and survives. On the contrary, you yourself saw the sign a moment ago. What you have told me confirms the presentiment I had as soon as I saw your face.”

Human curiosity prompted me to ask, “What was your presentiment?”

He smiled sadly, shook his old head and replied, “I have not the authority to tell you until you have found yourself. Until then you are a stranger on earth. If you are sometimes melancholy, if you are sometimes disconsolate, remember that kindly spirits are guarding you as are also the earthly rulers of our people from now on.”

The radiance disappeared from the old man’s face and I saw only his tired eyes, white beard and sparse hair. When the rain had ceased and the clouds had drifted out to sea he led me to the temple entrance and blessed me in the name of his god. The sun shone brightly, the air was clear and the earth glittered.

I continued my wanderings toward the source of the Tiber with the intention of following the river to Rome. Despite the autumn rains I found the narrow stream between the bleak mountain peaks. Stones cut my shoes, my mantle was torn and my only protection against the biting cold was an occasional shepherd’s shelter.

The first snow flurries greeted me as I came out of the forest to the wealthy city of Perusia. There I had to spend the coldest part of the winter and when the warm winds began to melt the snows in the mountain peaks I continued my journey down the Tiber. I wandered through the entire Etruscan heartland in a wide, wavering arc before reaching my starting point. The end of the journey I made as a timber floater on an immense raft that was being transported down the Tiber by a timber merchant.

As we approached the bridge we saw, toppled on the ground, the siege tower built by the Volscians. We also saw signs of destruction, but the bright green grass had mercifully covered the sooty ruins. On both sides of the river new barns and cattle enclosures were being built, oxen were calmly pulling their plows in the fields and birds were warbling everywhere with ruffled throats.

I had left Rome on an early spring day. On an early spring day I returned. But I will not praise the spring in Rome, for when I finally saw Arsinoe a year after our parting I noticed that she was in an advanced stage of pregnancy, nor did she rejoice at my return.