Etruscan swan song

by Pier Isa Della Rupe

CHAPTER 3

  The Roman patrician Marcus Fabius slowly took shape in my pool. He had a broad, bulging brow with a hint of obstinacy; deep-set, hawk-like grey eyes which gleamed with aggression, a wide mouth with thin lips apparently each drawn by two different artists. His jaw was fringed by a moth-eaten red-blond beard which he tugged at with a gloved hand. His freckled, peeling face had a tense, dark look on it. Finally he rose from his place and started to pace up and down impatiently. His voice rang out in the unnatural silence.

  “By all the gods, listen. You all know that the sweet wine of Rome has long run dry in our cellars and not even the lees are left in the bottom of the jars. Our pastures have all dried up and there is not even enough grass to graze our sheep. The city is hungry, so hungry that soon we will be rooting in the woods for acorns to eat. We must act before the black plague strikes Rome. The people are mutinous, we cannot go on stripping the very flesh off their bones. The truth is that those cursed forests in the Cimina mountains that you are all so sure are haunted in reality hide great riches, including pools of hot thermal waters that cure all manner of ills.”

  “Do you really believe, O noble Marcus Fabius, that there are healing waters in those mountains?” Asked one senator frowning.

  “Absolutely! I’m sure they work miracles too… but apart from the waters the whole of Etruria is incredibly rich. The pastures on the other side of the mountains are said to graze huge herds of cows and thriving calves with gold-tipped horns, while here we are on the verge of famine and the populace is on the verge of revolt. It’s madness to struggle on like this, with the dead burying the dead.

  History repeats itself, it was like this back in Coriolanus’ time, the poorer the plebs get the more they hate us, just like they did then. Only yesterday I ran into a large group of citizens, all armed with clubs, pitchforks and rakes who were cursing the Senate, the patricians and the whole nobility. They were all ready to riot and risk what little skin was left on their bones for a hunk of mouldy bread. The whole pack of ignorant peasants turned tail when they saw me standing up to them firmly, but I had to promise cheap grain in the name of the Senate to get rid of them, and in the long run promises won’t fill the curs’ bellies or save them from the spectre of dire poverty. I have never seen the Romans so determined to die fighting rather than die of hunger. I’m afraid that any minute now we’ll have an armed rabble here hammering on the Senate doors and baying for our blood.”

  Thus Marcus Fabius harangued his fellow senators, intent on inciting them to a course of action he ardently desired. A senator called Marcius Attilius pounded his lectern with his fist and thundered:

  “Cheap grain, indeed! What you should have promised those miserable carrion was the gallows. The poisonous little worms are always whinging for free food, even if you gave them mills and fields of ripe barley they’d still come cringing to us for chickpeas and flour, the bastards, the plebeian curs, the mongrels…”.

  “Yes, but it’s no good deceiving ourselves, even if they know that they can’t have free bread they’re still on the verge of riot.”

  “But when the state desperately needed their labour they refused to come out of hiding and now they dare revolt!”

  “Noble Attilius, everyone knows that the only ones who wax fat on famine are the moneylenders, but with all due respect to you and the Senate I think we should be planning how to get over those mountains and invade the rich Etruscans rather than waste our time on useless words, because that’s the only way we’re going to manage to fill our granaries. You surely do not truly believe that the trees in those woods were planted by gods, do you? Here we are, bound hand and foot by the maunderings of a handful of drunken priests who wander round the city yapping like jackals with their heads shaved like vultures. It’s obvious that all this Etruscan magic is merely a trick. How long are Roman soldiers going to cower in fear of imaginary bogeymen? How long is Rome going to go on gazing at the silver moon rising over the Cimina Mountains trembling like some superstitious whore? Aren’t we powerful enough to decide by ourselves when to harvest our grain? Don’t you think, O noble Attilius, that Roman citizens should go boldly forth and risk death fighting, whether they are farmers, shepherds or craftsmen, rather than attack the Senate or fester in their misery, howling at the moon like stray dogs?”

  “Brave words, Marcus Fabius, if a Roman really could make his way through that wilderness where the cock never crows, where the swallows dare not nest and even the glow worms are obscured in the evening gloom, if that Roman then came home safe and sound, his reason intact and his soul still his own, then he’d be a hero for generations. Men and women would flock to hear his tales, abandoning their ploughs in mid-furrow. Minstrels would sing his praises down the ages. All the tribes would claim him as their own, respectable matrons would tear their veils off at his passing and throw themselves at his feet as if he were Jupiter himself. By all the gods of Olympus I declare that the hearths would burst into flames where no one had laid fires, rivers and streams would leap from their beds and the blind would see light. But tell me brave Marcus Fabius, come down from the clouds, how can there be such a paragon living and breathing in Rome without any of us ever noticing?”

  “I’m your man, let me make the attempt. Send me out as a scout, I’m ready to leave. I have the strength to defeat friend and foe, the strength to climb mountains, wade rivers and if needs be I’m ready to descend into the very depths of hell. I have no fear of the thorny path, I’ll make my way through that wilderness and then march on Etruria and no one is going to stop me.”

  “Noble Marcus Fabius, so like your dear father. Your boldness and daring do you honour. We know your reputation in battle, cunning and bravery are your blood brothers, your soul possesses a steel not found in other men. It is well-known that you were only sixteen when you first served your country. How with sturdy legs planted firmly apart you slew all your foes with a single thrust of your sword. The whole of Rome acknowledges you as our best warrior; an expert in war, your military exploits are magnificent, you are a lion, the heroic scion of an illustrious line, a worthy descendant of your noble house. If my memory serves me well it was one of your ancestors who built the aqueduct which still gives us our sweetest water.

  But …. noble Marcus Fabius, you know well that those forests full of ravines, cliffs, mazes and secret passages leading to mysterious caverns are full of awful monsters that emerge from the mist. You know that whoever enters that wilderness is cursed. You are said to have looked the devil in the eye on more than one occasion, but the monsters I speak of pass through solid trees terrifying the very darkness, they burn in mysterious flames in the undergrowth and can transform themselves into serpents with eyes of fire, their wailing comes from beyond the grave, hideous shrieks which freeze the blood and cause the terrified horses to rake the ground with their iron-shod hooves.

  Day or night makes no difference, it’s impossible to get through. Scouts swear that they have seen them and the sight frightened them out of their wits, the curse palsied their limbs and wasted away their force, now they are like the living dead, pathetic heaps huddled in corners, staring eyes in spectral faces. Do you really want to end up like these poor madmen, the butt of cruel jokes, derided as a coward by men, women and children, maskless, witless, seeking only the comfort once found in your mother’s breast? The fearful monsters who roam the Cimina are not made of mortal clay, they cannot be killed by your ready sword.”

  “Where there may have once been fearsome guardians in those mountains are now nothing but empty skulls with a thousand worms sleeping in their sightless eyes. These are false marvels, fit only to frighten women, those tender souls on the lowest rung of the human ladder, terrified by as little as a crow cawing, fear making their hair stand on end and shrieking as if they had been stabbed by a hundred knives, one grain of dust makes them blind. Fear, gentlemen, resides in a coward’s breast and he dies a thousand deaths every day, are we going to submit tamely to fear and let Rome become a ble
ached skeleton instead of the Queen of Cities?

  Heaven and earth are waiting for the Romans to stir from their torpor and shake off the lethargy of their long period of inactivity. Look at nature around us, when the cuckoo seeks a warm nest for her sole egg she knows no qualms. Bees swarm in orderly masses armed only with their sting, they seek no permission for their raids but carry their booty back to their queen.”

  “Careful! Your enthusiasm is overcoming your good sense. Being a good warrior is not always enough. Are your proud eyes blazing with such a bright light that you are blind to your own mortality?”

  “I’m a Roman soldier, not a rag doll! You can’t trick a soldier into watering nettles in a garden, a soldier doesn’t back away from a rearing horse, a soldier must be a wolf, not a sheep, he must have coals of fire in his blood.”

  “True, noble Marcus Fabius, a soldier’s destiny is to leave his warm bed, his home and his children to seek death on the battlefield. He knows that if he doesn’t kill the enemy he will be killed in turn, or worse, captured and condemned to slavery in the endless darkness, but war and battle are one thing, the wilderness another...”

  “A soldier is still a soldier in the wilderness, he won’t stray from his path or despair, he won’t bow down like a leafless tree under the weight of the winter snow, he doesn’t believe in childish monsters, a soldier doesn’t believe in ghosts or the shades of the dead that can’t be driven off by a few stones thrown by a handful of women and children. I’ll tell you what happened to your scouts who fled in such disorder from the wilderness; on a wild night they heard the cawing of some crows trapped in a ravine and from the boredom of idleness they started tippling cup after cup of wine, so when the storm finally broke and the wind uprooted trees with unearthly shrieks they were so befuddled they were ready to believe anything and ran amuck. All it took was a couple of claps of thunder to turn them into quivering women. How many times during a storm have I seen the livid dawn rub up against the stars, the sea roaring like a chained lion, the sky raining down flaming hailstones, the waves swelling to touch the clouds and then curling over to swallow ships whole? So even if those groaning trees started gushing bright red blood like a fountain with a hundred spouts I would plunge my hands into it up to the elbows rather than run away, a slave to terror. Even if the ground beneath my feet started to heave like a sinking ship and opened its jaws to swallow me whole I would not flee until those trees started vomiting live corpses.”

  “Tell me, Marcus Fabius, what sort of death do you defiantly seek? Those mountains hold no glorious death, and however brave and resolute you are, you cannot uproot every single tree or kill the king of the forest with your drawn sword. That red earth conceals the bones of tormented souls, invisible ghosts who unwind their shrouds and rise from their tombs each night at the witching hour when the moon shines.”

  “We are sons of Rome, a proud and lordly breed, we fear nothing. If we want to rule the earth we must cross that chain of mountains otherwise we’ll be the laughing stock of future generations. How can you listen to such nonsense? It’s all mere superstition, babble about spectres in the shape of sirens. If only they would appear to me, whether they be good or evil spirits, I’d give my eyes and ears to know about this ark everyone talks about.

  I fear no omens, if you send me I swear that soon a thousand pillars made from the bronze of Etruscan ships will spring up on the crest of those mountains. I am ready to risk all to conquer the rich Etruscans. Black princes, Lucumi, head priests are all just a pack of poisonous scorpions cunningly telling ancient tales to stop us going where they don’t want us to go. What they won’t expect is to see us coming over the mountains despite their fearsome stories of haunted woods and monsters. Listen to me, Senators. Those mountains are Etruria’s only protection. We need to hone our arms just like a bull sharpens his horns when he gets wind of a young heifer in season, the eternal madness of blind lust when the fire of Venus burns in his very bones and he prepares to do battle with his rivals. For days and days he charges at tree trunks spattering the ground with black blood and foam, the wilderness echoes with his enraged roars, and when he has finally worked himself up to a pitch he charges down on his enemy when he’s least expecting it. And that’s exactly what we’ll do; we’ll attack them on the flank and by the time they realise it we’ll have already built a camp and we’ll be drawn up with our swords out ready to kill the lot of them, not even the gods themselves will be able to stop us then, Etruria will be ours. As far as I’m concerned I hereby swear that I’ll spill every last drop of my blood to make this mission a success.”

  “Do not blaspheme, leave the gods out of it and swear no more. A Roman soldier doesn’t need to swear, oaths are merely a smokescreen, leave them to the whores of Babylon lounging under the torrid palm trees of Asia. If you are really determined to break your neck over this enterprise, so be it, go with our blessing! If you succeed in carrying out what you promise we’ll all be in seventh heaven, but beware! The feast of the winter solstice is on 25th December when the wind blows from the north and the infant sun wins the battle over darkness, on that solemn day when Rome celebrates the ancient rite of the Sun’s Victory with singing and dancing and music, if you are not back by that longest night, then I hope you’re already dead and buried because anyone found out and about on that night is tried for high treason.”

  “Done! If I’m not back for the winter solstice then Jupiter, lord of the skies, lightning and the oak, can strike me down with a thunderbolt and you can condemn me to leap from the Tarpean rock and then bury me in an unmarked tomb. Because it will mean that I will have been foiled by cruel fate. Or if I come back with staring, mad eyes, trembling like a woman at every stir of wind, then rip my nails off, skin me alive and send me back to those infernal black caverns in the mountains where no man has set foot without so much as a grain of wheat. And there I will rot like a leper, in the stink of my ulcers, sores and fevers. And I, only I, will be there to hear my cries, my laments and my silences.”

  It was at this point that Marcius Attilius rose, red in the face and with his eyes blazing with the same expression as the fox’s when he’s trying to persuade the lion that the grapes are sour, and addressed the assembly:

  “Heed him, noble senators, heed this son of Rome, as strong as a rock, as brave as a madman who has buried his soul under seven veils of daring. As far as I’m concerned he can leave at cockcrow, fill his cup with wine to the brim and as we await his return there will be no peace in heaven or on earth. May the god of war assist him and may that same god cause huge flowers to grow where he treads. But if he ever manages to return then he will be drawn in triumph through the city in a chariot pulled by four horses garlanded with oak leaves. The whole of Rome will cheer themselves hoarse singing his praises and scattering flowers in his path. The matrons will cast their spindles to the ground and will run to greet him with lighted torches held high, crying out his name, and a thousand virgins with bare feet and long flowing hair will wash his wounds in rose water from silver basins. Nothing else remains noble Marcus Fabius but to bid you farewell. Farewell and may the gods watch over you. Farewell, farewell.”