me a silver fork as though the world contained no thieves.
I did not attempt to make friends, but as I walked in the streets and the market places I enjoyed the composure of the people and the beauty of the city and began to feel that, compared to its neighbor, Rome was a barbaric place. Presumably the residents of Veii thought likewise although I did not hear them speak unkindly of Rome. They lived as though Rome did not exist, having signed a twenty-year pact of non-aggression with it. But there was something sad in the faces and smiles of the people of Veii.
On the first morning when I was content only to breathe the air of Veii, which was like medicine after the Roman swamps, I found myself in a small market place and sat down on a worn stone bench. I saw the shadows of people hastening by. I saw a donkey with its neat forelock and its basket of vegetables. I saw that a country woman had placed cheeses on display on a clean cloth.
With a catch of my breath I realized in a sudden flash of perception that once again I had previously lived that same moment of happiness. As in a dream I rose and turned a familiar corner. Before me rose a temple whose pillared front I recognized.
The mysteriously splendid and deep-hued statues on the temple roof represented Artemis defending her deer against Herakles while the other gods watched the scene with smiles on their divine faces. I ascended the steps and entered the gate behind which a sleepy temple servant sprinkled holy water over me with his whisk. I became increasingly certain that I had once before lived that moment.
Against the dimness of the walls, in light that streamed down from an opening in the roof, stood the divinely beautiful goddess of Veii on her pedestal, a dreamy smile on her lips. A child was in her arms and at her feet was a goose with arched neck. Nor did I have to inquire to know that her name was Uni. I knew it and recognized her by her face, the child and the goose, but how I knew it I cannot explain. My hand rose to my forehead and I raised my right arm in sacred greeting, bowing my head. Something in me knew that the image was sacred and that the spot on which I stood had been holy even before the temple and the city had been built.
No priest was visible but the servant guessed from my attire that I was a stranger and rose from his seat to describe the votive offerings and sacred objects along the walls. My devotion was so deep that I motioned him away, for I did not wish to look at anything in the temple save Uni, the divine personification of womanly tenderness and goodness.
Only afterward did I remember that I had seen that vision in the goddess’s dream at the temple of Eryx. In itself it was not unusual, for a person frequently dreams that which happens only later, but I wondered why my dream in the temple of Aphrodite had led me to the sacred house of compassionate love and maternal happiness unless it was merely the goddess’s mockery at my expense.
On the threshold of summer, news came to Veii that the Volscian army under Coriolanus was marching on Rome to avenge, as they said, the insult suffered by the Volscians at the circus. But the Roman forces did not advance to meet the enemy in open battle as they usually did. From that it was surmised that Rome would be in a state of siege, as unbelievable as it seemed.
By walking briskly I could have reached Rome in a day, but instead I turned away from it, first northward to see the lake of Veii and from there over the mountains westward along shepherds’ trails to the city of Caere, which was near the sea. For the first time in my life I saw the limpidity and red glow of a large lake at sunset. I do not know what so inexpressibly stirred me at the sight of that lake surrounded by mountains, but the mere rustle of the reeds and the smell of the water, so different from the stench of brine, made my breath quicken. I myself thought that I was only a traveler who wished to see something new, but my heart knew better.
In the city of Caere I suspected for the first time the true mightiness of the twelve Etruscan states when I saw the immense necropolis that rose, beyond a deep valley. On either side of its sacred way was a series of circular burial mounds heaped on stone bases within which were entombed the city’s ancient rulers surrounded by their sacrificial gifts.
Life in Caere was noisier than in noble Veii. From morning to night one heard the clink and clank of artisans in innumerable workshops, and sailors from all countries wandered through the streets glancing about in search of their customary diversion on land. Although the port of Caere was far away at the mouth of the river, the fame of the Etruscan cities’ splendor and gaiety had traveled so far that alien sailors willingly climbed the steep road to the city.
Instead of walking in the restless streets, I preferred to breathe the air of the holy mountain and the fragrance of mint and laurel shrubs in the city of tombs. The guard explained that the sacred roundness of the tombs had its origin in ancient times when the Etruscans had still lived in hive-shaped huts, and because of that the oldest temples, such as the temple of Vesta in Rome, were also round. He spoke of Lucumones instead of kings and I asked him to explain what he meant.
He spread his hands in a manner that he had learned from Greek visitors and said, “It is difficult to explain to a stranger. A Lucumo is that which is.”
When I did not understand he shook his head and tried again. “A Lucumo is a holy king.”
Still I did not understand. Then he pointed to several gigantic mounds and said that they were the tombs of Lucumones. But when I indicated the most recently built tomb on which the grass had not yet had time to grow, he made a negative gesture and explained as though to a barbarian, “Not a Lucumo’s tomb. Only a ruler’s tomb.”
My insistence made him impatient because he found it difficult to explain what seemed apparent. “A Lucumo is a ruler chosen by the gods,” he explained crossly. “He is found. He is recognized. He is the high priest, the supreme judge, the supreme lawgiver. An ordinary ruler can be dethroned or his power can be inherited, but no one can deprive a Lucumo of his power because the power is his.”
“How is he found, how is he recognized?” I asked in bewilderment. “Is not a Lucumo’s son a Lucumo?” I gave the guard a piece of silver to pacify him. ^
But he could not explain how a Lucumo is recognized and what distinguishes him from an ordinary person. Instead he said, “A Lucumo’s son is not usually a Lucumo although he may be. Very old, very divine families have given birth to Lucumones successively. But we are living in corrupt times. Lucumones are born but rarely these days.”
He pointed to a majestic tomb that we were passing. Before it was a white stone pillar topped by a round, instead of a peaked, headdress.
“A queen’s tomb,” he explained with a smile, and said that Caere was one of the few Etruscan cities which had been ruled by a queen. The reign of the famous queen was remembered by the people of Caere as a golden age, for the city had prospered more than at any other time. The guard declared that she had reigned in Caere for sixty years, but I suspected that he had learned the art of exaggeration from Greek visitors.
“But how can a woman rule a city?” I asked in amazement.
“She was a Lucumo,” explained the guard.
“Can even a woman be a Lucumo?” I asked.
“Of course,” he said impatiently. “It happens rarely, but through a whim of the gods a Lucumo can be born a woman. That is what happened at Caere.”
I listened and did not understand because I listened with prosaic ears and had bound myself to lead an ordinary life among people. But many times I traversed the difficult road and returned to the giant tombs that exuded an air of mysterious power.
In the city itself I saw another sight that moved me strangely. Beside the wall was a row of potters’ stalls, most of them selling cheap red funerary urns to the poor. In Caere the deceased were not buried as they were in Rome but were cremated and their ashes buried in a round urn which could be of expensive bronze decorated with beautiful designs or of plain red clay such as the poor used. Only the lid had some clumsy image as a handle.
I happened to be looking at the red urns when a poor country couple, hand in hand, came to select a resting place for their deceased daughter. They chose an urn with a lid bearing a crowing cock. When they saw it they smiled with joy and the man immediately pulled out a stamped copper ingot from his pouch. He did not haggle over the price.
“Why isn’t he bargaining?” I asked the potter in surprise.
The man shook his head. “One does not bargain over sacred things, you stranger.”
“But that vessel is not sacred,” I insisted. “It is merely clay.”
Patiently the man explained, “It is not sacred when it leaves the potter’s kiln. Nor is it sacred here on this table. But when the ashes of that poor couple’s daughter have been placed in it and the lid has been closed, it is sacred. That is why the price is modest and unconditional.”
