Some people can't resist the lure of mysterious
riddles and lost civilizations. Visiting Fiesole in Tuscany in 1920, D.H.
Lawrence sensed the presence of the vanished Etruscans lingering in the
cypress trees:
They say only the fit survive,
But I invoke the spirits of the lost.
Those that have not survived, the darkly lost,
To bring their meaning back into life again …
In 1634, 19-year-old Curzio Inghirami and his younger sister Lucrezia came
upon a strange object in the riverbank below their family villa, Scornello,
near the Tuscan city of Volterra: a capsule of hair and mud containing layers
of paper inscribed with strange words in a strange alphabet. It was the legacy,
apparently, of an Etruscan seer who had lived at the time of Cicero, when the
Roman army was conquering the Etruscan cities of Volterra and Fiesole. Faced
with the destruction of his culture and language, the prophet had consigned
his prophecies to capsules, or "scarith," to be dug up at some later
date.
Curzio soon discovered more scarith in the vicinity. He reported his discovery
to the local learned society and published an expensive, lavishly illustrated
book titled "Ethruscarum Antiquitatum Fragmenta," giving details of
his findings. Expected by his family to train for a career in law, Curzio had
managed instead to set himself up as a kind of local historian, a vocation far
closer to his heart.
There was a problem, however. It was generally known that the Etruscans wrote
on linen rather than on the kind of paper contained in the scarith. Also,
Etruscan was written from right to left, not, as in Curzio's specimen, left to
right. Worse yet, the seer's handwriting bore an uncanny resemblance to
Curzio's. Soon, a full-scale controversy was in play involving scholars from
all over Europe — at least one expert dismissed the book as a pile of manure.
There is no doubt that the scarith were a forgery; neither is there doubt
about the forger's identity. What was Curzio's motive? Plunging us into the
politics and beliefs of 17th century Italy, scholar Ingrid D. Rowland
reconstructs the whole story with flair and zest. The vanished Etruscans had
great romantic and patriotic appeal for 17th century Tuscans. Curzio, she
believes, was inspired by a genuine love of history along with a high-spirited
prankishness that led him to perpetrate what was, in effect, an elaborate
practical joke: "No wonder Curzio and Lucrezia … greeted the discovery
of the first scarith by doubling over with laughter. What fun they must have
had creating them!" Indeed, there is no such word as "scarith,"
not even in Etruscan: Curzio made it up. No wonder D.H. Lawrence also detected
The smile, the subtle Etruscan smile still lurking
Within the tombs,
Etruscan cypresses.
He laughs longest who laughs last … •