Lituus

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

Etruscan heritage - The mystery

The wish of knowing who the Etruscans were or, if you like, of disclosing their mystery, goes very further experts’ must or the very commendable curiosity of antique history and archaeology lovers.

We know nothing or very little of many antique peoples but generally we accept this without problem.

For example, from the Hittites we received very few things and about them we know very little compared with what we know about their neighbour peoples as Sumerians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Hebrews and so on; that is the unsettled peoples that after long roaming eventually established themselves in the “fertile crescent”.

But we don’t feel ourselves pushed at the same way to search about Hittites: we deceive ourselves thinking it’s enough knowing well their neighbours despite this may be a big mistake.

Instead since some decades elaboration of studies about the Etruscans has been in vogue. Not only among the “present Etruscan settlers”, always very available to deep their graves and, first of all, their graves contents. These studies are much in vogue among scholars and lovers not only Italian but, particularly, among North Europeans whose interests are certainly less venal.

May be that this wish of more knowledge be strongly caused by a couple of different and almost conflicting feelings.

The first feeling tells us that we are today what the Etruscans were once upon a time and that all we are imbued with their culture at least as with the Greek and Latin ones.

The opposite feeling tells us that the creative power of the Etruscans’ spirit is lost for ever and unreachable unless a miracle. We are separated from them by an inaccessible wall intentionally built by Romans as by Etruscans too. Etruscans were not used to write about their history or, at least, we didn’t yet get enough evidences. Not even a possible discovery of a new hypothetical “Volterra Stone” important as the “Rosetta Stone” and so very more useful than the “ Pyrgi’s Lamine” could make us many steps forward on the way of a more knowledge of their world. This for the lack of written history.

It seems that the Etruscans didn’t love writing about their history. They were occupied to live, and they did this with great intensity and passion. Consequently they left to the posterity few written words and almost only signs of the architectural language.

The part of wall built by the Romans has instead a more evil-minded characteristic.

The Romans had the merit of conquering almost all the world they knew, or at least so they thought.

After the world conquest, piece by piece, they proceeded to civilize it, obviously, by their rude manners, but it was an action any way meritorious.

On the contrary it may be regrettable, however unavoidable, that with the conquest of lands and peoples they assumed the right also of representing the conquered people for the posterity.

This could seem a no important thing from a strictly political point of view but it is determinant in the time perspective.

And certainly it is determinant for us that see the antique world across the filtering lens of the Romans and sometime feel images not very truthful and often not believable too.

Just to make a banal example, it may be interesting asking us who was in command in Rome during its seven kings.

“The Romans!” could seem the obvious answer.

Not at all! It’s more probable the Etruscans were in charge, but we don’t know more that; and the Romans would never have recognized that, even subjected to t*****e.

It seems that the Roman historians, first of all Tito Livio, wrote on commission what the Capitol’s potentates wanted be written or be omitted. The subject that foremost had to be repudiated was the evidence of the Etruscans’ cultural, economical and political superiority, that remained so till the end of the republican age.

However, aware of these troubles we continue to ask ourselves with passion in what we are still Etruscan today, and what of their heritage we have lost for ever.

These few introduction pages are not fit to sketch an answer but it’s possible developing some consideration of different type.

The History – or a history?

So, with which spirit it will be read a literary work that has the tone of an education novel but is full of descriptions and believable details about the Etruscans’ life and their thought?

If it is considered an historical novel it will be enhanced the historical or the fictional look? It is given much relevance to the details veracity or these will be accepted as elements functional to the literary work?

At last the answer doesn’t matter to the reader, that has the claim and the pleasure of tackling the work as he likes. But the question has strong fall-outs on the notion of history considered as scientific subject and with rules to follow.

Writing history can be defined as narrating of human events. To do this we must trace the sources, i.e. memories of men that are in the same time both object and subject of this science.

It’s historian responsibility to pick up and verify the sources. But the historian is a man, and the sources are produced by other men: this can cause many doubts about the first principle of the science that is of releasing absolutely veracious outcomes. History, written by men, can be only subjective, partial and temporarily, even if the purpose to follow up is always the research of truth by the work of detached Historians.

The philosophers of the last three centuries have for long evaluated the subject - the German ones with strength - and worked out notions as the Romantic idealism and dialectical materialism. In these notions the history’s “engine” is different being in the first case the spirit and in the other the economic structure. But the results are equivalent because both produce an outcome absolute as well necessary leaving no space to any other chance.

Today philosophy seems less enthusiastic and sure, and it’s clear the reason: after a declaration of finis storiae, as well that of the God’s death, now we attend powerless and docile to the third plague of the mankind, that is the sources’ liquation in the big melting-pot of the globalized communication. A meagre comfort we can have considering that from now on it will be difficult that could happen anything worse. We then acknowledge, as already did some scholars accustomed to consult rich and confidential historical archives, that the a big part of the documental sources shine for their common feature to be more or less faked already at the moment of their first writing up. If not intentionally at least because of subjectivity, bias and transitoriness that inevitably they contain.

So we realize with disconcert that the enormous fresco of the history is based on a plaster layer very rotten and that, of course, in a world where each one is forger nobody is forger. And anyone feel the right to post in the web his very personal interpretation of universe and history.

My father, that was not at all a philosopher but endowed of a solid good sense, often told that history cannot be written at least before fifty years from the happenings of the related events; and emphasized the words “at least”.

My unpretentious opinion is the same I had many years ago when I discussed with my father arguing that doesn’t matter if it’s passed only an instant or three whole millenniums. The fallibility of the history remains notwithstanding intellectual honesty and competence of the historian. Writing the evolution of our ancestors is extremely arduous in spite how wise and responsible be the writer.

During the centuries philosophy was the means by which man tried to talk with gods while maths and its son physics are the arts by which the god, or if you like the demiurge, ever since endeavours of talking with man.

Unfortunately many times this confused chatter turned into a dialogue of the deaf because philosophy got lost in metaphysics and maths was unable to reconcile the accounts with what is undecidable.

Celio Vibenna – The history

When politics seize history it’s rather natural that distorts it for its advantages. When on the contrary it’s literature that seize it the utilitarian purpose is much less probable; and we think that in most cases be so, but the reality comes anyway altered. Politics as well as literature propose a different image of the reality but literature openly acknowledges that and considers this transformation its first aim.

The content of this work tracks a figure really lived following the events of his personal evolution from roguish teenager easy prey of his sensuality to augur enlightened and conscious of his role.

The historical figure is Caile Vipinas (for the Latins Celio Vibenna) followed during the part of his life when he is still unaware of his own future: when he is only the young scion of an aristocratic Etruscan family of Caere apparently fated to be one of the Roman kings.

But it’ll not be so.

It will be his servant Mastarna that seizes the prestigious office and the relevant material power taking the well-known name of Servio Tullio. The accession to the power, to the detriment of the previous king Tarquinio, Etruscan too, will be realized with the military and political support of Caile, the protagonist of this book and of his brother Aule Vipinas.

After other events will arrive, tragic and b****y as often happens when the power is at stake. After other time and other blood, and after centuries started with a long trip crossing lands and seas to search metals and a new home to be colonized, the Etruscan age quietly ended.

Here the Etruscan story stops, the story of the Rasenna’s people.

The tale stops far before: its protagonist Caile seems not interested to enter the history. What really interests him is finding himself and in the meantime amusing himself as much as possible. For this he braved indeed traumatic initiation tests turning into augur, one of the twelve big. He did all this with a bit mad nonchalance of a teenager that feels himself almost immortal and has the aware levity of feeling his nature almost divine.

We readers that will follow him in his path will discover, page by page, how the life of an Etruscan young aristocratic proceeds. We’ll learn, after some uncertainty and with the help of a rich glossary that integrates and concludes the book, the meanings of the words he uses.

We’ll learn for example to distinguish among different shapes of cups or goblets, a Kantharos, a Kylix or a Kyatos. Among wine containers we’ll distinguish an Hidriai, a bronze basin, an Oinochòe or an Olpe, a bucchero ewer; among different religious ceremonies a Cexa, an Extispicium, an Helna, a Nuktelia; among the Vinaia of Celusna and those of Tuxulxa the celestial and underworld gods.

We’ll enter in the centre of vibrant mystical initiatory ceremonies: the sound played by twelve priests, the procession of the water Mystery, the plunging in the gods’ labyrinths looking for the Great Mother and the subsequent resurrection, the horrifying ceremony of the thunderbolts on Ilva isle, the foundation of the new town of Statnes and, in the end the devastating revelations received during Aranthur’s funeral.

Gradually we’ll enter deeper in the personage’s spirit and will sense an undertone of something that seems a musical quietly counterpoint that reveals the feeling of the narrator, a man very distant time, and that is the author of the book.

In a crossed recollection game history unravels with a recurring rhythm: the perception of the morning crisp air of the Tuscan countryside, that always accompanies the people of the tale.

Who will decide to visit the places described in the book can use the detailed maps that are in appendix to this book jointly with a useful set of notes and elaborations; and will discover too that the morning brisk air, now it’s difficult to find, and in short will be aware that the atmosphere of the present woods, sometimes depressing, testifies no much a climatic change as a ruthless process of decay.

Where the tale continuously showed us the image of a wood vibrating of life and crossed by harmonious flows of energetic currents, today we see the melancholy chaos of an abandoned and dirty brushwood, we see the ghost of a dead world that is to precipitate on itself.

Only the sharp look of he who is able to catch the marks of ancient memories can see here and there sparks of strengths always vibrant but more feebly as they were to give their last breath.

Lituus – The tell of a dream

The book you have in your hands contains a slight strength from which an as much slight energy is emanated and, if we leave ourselves transport in a fair way, we can follow those wood’s paths feeling the depth sense of those vague sparks of memory. As that memory be emerged and rooted in the creative spirit of the author isn’t impossible to know.

But this is what always happens in literary creations.

A very similar process happened in the spirit of the author of the pictures that enrich this book, and was this way that between the two authors it was developed a singular creative symbiosis. This to such an extent that at the work conclusion it was difficult to disjoin the text contents from the pictures that it makes the story even more imaginative than it be.

This book is so constituted of words and pictures in inseparable way so that hardly it would be possible disjointing one part from the other.

At first glance the pictures appear vaguely oneiric but carefully looking at them they seem inspired more to divination that to dreaming. Inspired by that unexpected magic concurrence of the anima rerum that recalls the smokes of the countryside when they thicken in the summery warm and tangle in billows and jagged edges forming images of spirits and dreamlike beasts.

They seem compositions of holographic pieces as when we look without attention a lot of confused signs and suddenly we see emerging from them a deep image that was nested in an unknown space and just now springs out allowing to be perceived.

To fully enjoy this work and taste its subtle fascination it’s enough seizing it in instinctive way, without asking by which knowing of the so-called real history was born that of Caile and of his magic Lituus: it would be reductive to limit all only in the fantasy space.

It’s enough the mention merely hinted at the second chapter, when the boy, surely very sensible, brightens up in front of the trail of a world for him yet unknown and that imprints and roots itself for ever in the body’s memory.

Certainly in the heart, the place from which it is emanated the sense of empathy towards the way of life of people and single men before unknown; certainly in the head, centre of the sensory perceptions where in the time are stocked all the learned news and all the views of the seen things by own eyes and touched by own hands; certainly in the liver, often thought place of creative fantasy and that, as the liver of the sacrificial victim, was able to reveal the more arcane truths; certainly much in the spirit where – why not? – the hidden memory of a reincarnate Caile could be crystallized.

Or perhaps, he was reincarnated only among the evanescent clouds of the fantasy.

But we like thinking a knowledge path more tangible and nearer to the ground, even if embellished by the most traditional literary inspiration.

In other words we like seeing the author picking up, as per chance, among the necropolis with which he has much familiarity, a very old and precious finding, one of the inevitable handwritten of which the literature history is rich, and discovered a scroll full of information written using myriads of characters as the Etruscan ones, pointed and inaccessible to common people.

A scroll that he found very hidden in an olpe, a very wonderful wine jug that only the Etruscan were able to make.

Only the Etruscan in all the known world.

In short: a handwritten inside a divine olpe.

Bruno Del Greco