never find your way home, but no one dared interfere in divine matters and guide you. Our augur greeted you upon your first arrival in Rome, read you the omens and spread the news among the consecrated. From the high priest of lightning on the island we heard that you were coming and that the thunderbolt struck a full circle for you in elation. Tell me, are you a true Lucumo?”
“I do not know,” I said. “I know only that I have returned home.”
“Yes,” he admitted, “at least you are Lars Porsenna’s son. You have slept by your father’s tomb. One cannot mistake your face. Even if you are not a Lucumo you are of noble blood.”
I saw the plowers in the valley leave their plows and oxen and the hoers drop their hoes. One after another they stepped onto the holy road and began to climb toward us.
“I ask for nothing,” I said, “only my native land and a place in which to live my life. I demand no inheritance, I aspire to no power. I am the humblest of the humble now that I have reached my home. I knew the hills, I knew the mountain, the lake and my father’s tomb. That is enough for me. Tell me of my father.”
“Your city is Clusium,” he said evasively. “It is the city of black vases and eternal human faces. For so long as we can remember, our potters and sculptors have made eternal human faces of clay, soft stone and alabaster. That is why you were so easily recognized. Soon you will see your father’s likeness, for down in his tomb he rests eternally on his sarcophagus with a sacrificial cup in his hand. There are also many likenesses of him in the city.”
“Tell me of my father,” I pleaded again. “Until now I have known nothing about my birth.”
He said, “Lars Porsenna was the bravest of the inland rulers but he did not acknowledge himself to be a Lucumo, and we called him King only after his death. He even conquered Rome although he did not compel the Romans to reinstate their exiled ruler. Instead he taught the Romans the same form of government that we have followed in our city ever since his death. We have two leaders, a council of two hundred, and officials who are elected yearly. We also listen to the voice of the people. Ambitious men who followed Porsenna have all failed in their attempts to seize power. Unless we find a true Lucumo, we decided, we will not be ruled by any man.
“Your father was adventuresome and restless in his youth,” the lightning priest related. “He took part in a military expedition into Cumae and when we were defeated he asked, ‘What do the Greeks have that we lack?’ And so he traveled to the Greek cities to learn their customs.”
In the distance a white crowd began to swarm out of the city gate. The first farmers reached us and paused at a respectful distance to look at me, their hardened hands hanging at their sides. “The Lucumo,” they whispered to one another. “The Lucumo has come.”
The priest turned toward them and explained, “It is but Lars Por-senna’s son who has returned from strange lands. He does not even know what ‘Lucumo’ means. Do not disturb him with your foolish whispers.”
But the farmers mumbled and from lip to lip passed the words, “He brought a good rain with him. He arrived with the waxing moon on the day of the blessing of the fields.”
They bent leafy branches from the trees, waved them in greeting and shouted jubilantly, “Lucumo, Lucumo!”
The lightning priest was disturbed. “You are making the people restless. That is not good. If you are in truth a Lucumo you must first be examined and recognized. That can happen only in the autumn at the holy meeting of the cities by the lake at Volsinii. Until then it would be best if you were not to reveal yourself.”
But the first arrivals from the city, hastily dressed in their best, were already arriving, breathless from the climb. The babble rose to a roar as the people described what had happened. I even heard it said that I had dropped from the sky on a thunderbolt, while others claimed that I had arrived on the back of a doe. Ever more triumphantly rose the cry, “Lucumo, Lucumo!”
Then came the augurs with their curved staves and the sacrificial priests each with a bronze or clay model of a sheep’s liver marked with the names and regions of the various gods. The crowd made way for them and they stepped before me, studying me shrewdly. The sun went behind a cloud and a shadow fell on us although the goddess’s mountain still gleamed in brilliant sunlight across the valley.
The priests were in a predicament, as I realized later. True, the oldest among them were consecrated and knew of my coming, but even they disputed whether I was a true Lucumo or merely Lars Porsenna’s son, which in itself pleased the people. Mere omens and prophesies were not sufficient to prove me a Lucumo until such time as I acknowledged myself and was acknowledged. That could be done only by a true Lucumo and there were but two still living in all the land. The new times had made many people, especially in the seaports, suspect the reality of Lucumones. That was the Greek influence. The hot wind of doubt swept over sea and land from lonia.
The priests would probably have preferred to take me aside and talk to me, but the crowd was first. Joyous, laughing people sped the divine litter to the holy mountain from the temple where youths and maidens had seized it and wreathed their heads in myrtle, violet and ivy. Musicians blew on their double pipes and sacred dancers waved their rattles as the people fearlessly pushed their way to me and forced me to seat myself on the double cushion of the god.
As they began to lift the litter to their shoulders I rose angrily to my feet, pushing them from me. The music ceased and the youths stared at me in alarm and rubbed their arms as though they had been injured although I had merely pushed them aside. On my own feet I walked to the sacred stairs and descended them. At that moment the sun burst forth between the clouds, shining directly on me and the stairs. As the rays glinted in my hair the crowd behind me chanted solemnly, “Lucumo, Lucumo!” They were no longer gay and joyous but deeply respectful.
The priests followed me and behind them came the people, quietly and no longer shoving one another. Thus, on my own feet, I crossed the valley and ascended the winding road, on my own feet stepped through the archway into my city. The sun shone brightly all the while and a warm breeze caressed my face.
I spent the beautiful summer quietly in a house which the city fathers provided for me. Silent servants took care of my needs and I studied myself and listened to myself. Consecrated priests told me that which I had to know but added, “The knowledge is in yourself if you are a Lucumo, not in us.”
That hot summer was the happiest in my life as I groped to open the secret doors of my innermost self. It was a fruitful and beautiful summer for all Clusium, with sunshine, warm winds and sufficient rain. The harvest was better than it had been within the memory of man, and the wine was sweet and good. The cattle thrived, there was not a single act of violence within the city, and neighbors solved their old differences peacefully. Good fortune had accompanied me to Clusium after many difficult and discordant years.
The consecrated told me about my birth and how I had been born with my face covered by a membrane. There had been other omens as well which had prompted the old men to predict to my father that I would develop into a Lucumo for my people.
But he had replied, “I have not acknowledged myself to be a Lucumo though men have tempted me, for I am not a Lucumo. Intelligence, courage and integrity suffice for a man. Pity the suffering, support the weak, slap the insolent across the mouth, tear the pouch of the greedy, concede the plowman his plowed land, protect the people from robbers and usurpers. A ruler needs no other guide and does not have to be a Lucumo to follow it. If my son is a true Lucumo he must be able to find himself and his city as the Lucumones did in former times. No one is a true Lucumo merely because of birth. Only at the age of forty can a Lucumo acknowledge himself and be acknowledged. That is why I must give up my son.”
So when I was seven my father had taken me to Sybaris, the most civilized Greek city in Italy, and entrusted my care to a friend from whom he extracted a promise not to tell me of my birth. It must have been hard for him to do that for I was his only son. My mother had died when I was three and he had not wished to marry again. But he considered it his duty to his people to sacrifice me because he did not wish me to be a false Lucumo.
It was probably his intention to follow my development from afar, but the war with Croton broke out suddenly and Sybaris was destroyed more thoroughly than any city previously had been. Of the four hundred families of Sybaris only the women and children were sent by sea to the safety of lonia and Miletus. Not even in the moment of greatest danger did my father’s friend break his oath and reveal my birth to those who took me to lonia with them. And after the destruction of Sybaris had been mourned for a time the wretched refugees had been forgotten and pushed from place to place.
My father was killed unexpectedly by a wild boar before he had even reached fifty, and after his death many considered that he had, after all, been a Lucumo who had chosen to conceal the fact. Others again claimed that he was not since he had gone to war, and these considered his death a punishment for having interfered in Roman politics. After all, the wild boar was the sacred animal of the Latins, even older and more sacred than the Romans’ wolf.
