Alien Space Gods Of Ancient Greece and Rome (30 page)

At the
British
Museum
in
London
there is a small head in terra-cotta coming from
Anatolia
originally populated by the fierce Hittites; this head reveals strange lineaments which are met in line and form in no other work of that epoch. Especially the eyes. Enormous, circular, very like two great buttons surmounted by others a little smaller but nothing like human eyes. Then the mouth. A thin cut without lips set in an inhuman smile. Pointed nose. This head does not appear to belong to a man, that is to a man of Earth;, it at once evokes the two little men seen by Signor Johannis beside their strange machine at Ravco in 1947; there is a fascinating resemblance between the terra-cotta head and the artist's drawings.

Recently two unfortunate bank-clerks in
Mendoza
were immobilized by two little men in black, who sampled some blood from their finger. The strange manikins who visited the Hittites are haunting
Italy
today.

On
10th April 1962
Signor Mario Zuccala near
Florence
, saw an object resembling two bowls put one on top of the other land. A door opened, two Beings alighted, they were about five feet tall, completely covered by an armour of shining metal, two antennae came out of their heads. Signor Eugenio Siragusa on
30th April 1962
on the road from
Catania
to Etna met two Spacemen each 5 feet 4 inches tall wearing metallic helmets and space-suits. In the yard of a silk-mill in
Milan
at
2.20 a.m.
on
17th December 1962
Francesco Rizzi saw an aluminum coloured Flying Saucer land, a door opened and a little man about 3 feet and 3 inches appeared.

Bruno Ghibaudi said in 1963 that the number of definitely ascertained landings on the Earth then totaled 2,000 and the reported sightings at least 200,000; he quoted
'La Domenica del Corriere'
which in 1962 stated there had been at least 200 landings in Italy alone. Scores of Extraterrestrial landings witnessed by reliable people could be quoted from UFO periodicals in several languages, many describe 'little men' landing recently in
Italy
.

If all this literature becomes lost, our descendants in AD 5000 will have no record of Spacemen in our twentieth century. Most of the writings from Ancient Rome were destroyed. Marcus Tcrentius Varro (116-27 BC) wrote 620 books, only two survived, he may have described many Spacemen in his erudite Latin. Alas, we shall never know. Livy (59 BC-AD 17) hinted that the Etruscans had composed a considerable literature and he regretted that almost all had perished; in earlier centuries it was fashionable for Roman intellectuals to study Etruscan culture instead of Greek.

Varro mentions a certain Volnius who wrote plays, he might have rivalled Aeschylus but not a line is left. The scholarly Emperor Claudius studied Etruscan traditions and wrote a history of the Etruscans in twenty volumes, all lost. All the works written by all the Etruscans in a period of four hundred years arc missing. Just imagine such a wide gap in our own literature since the birth of Shakespeare to the present day? The few inscriptions on tablets, tiles and funeral wrappings defy satisfactory translation despite the efforts of Dr. Zacharis Mayani and his colleagues; our main knowledge of those intriguing Etruscans is gleaned from a few references by Latin writers. The Etruscans, a religious and literate people, would surely preserve a detailed record of their Teacher, Tages, and his doctrine in their Libri Tagetici; his deeds and words were preached for centuries by the all-powerful Priesthood who dominated the daily lives of all Etruscans from the cradle to the grave.

All we know about Tages now is a tantalising mention by Cicero that he was a child with the wisdom of an old man, who was found in a field and whose teachings so greatly influenced the Etruscan then Roman religions. Those proud and talented Etruscans would never have worshipped any mortal child only half their size; they had intelligent children of their own, none to honour as a God. To capture the awe and the imagination of the Etruscans Tages must have worked wonders, impressed the wisest Priests with his own transcendent wisdom and exhibited a dazzling genius demonstrating beyond doubt that despite his diminutive stature he was indeed an Immortal not of this world come to teach mankind the Will of the Gods.

Although
Cicero
makes no mention of any Spaceship Tages must surely have been an Extraterrestrial resembling those Space dwarfs seen by Signor J. L. Johannis in
Italy
three thousand years later. Tages himself said he had descended from the God Tinia in the skies. Had Tages lived and died like mortal men he would hardly have evoked much veneration. There is no record whatever of his death, perhaps he was translated to the skies in a Spaceship like Elijah, who lived about the same time.

The Etruscan religion was 'revealed', it was enshrined in Holy Books, ideas quite foreign to
Greece
and
Rome
but like that of
Israel
; contrary to popular belief the Jews were not the only people to have their religion revealed to them by an Extraterrestrial. Christians believe that Christ incarnated on Earth to teach the Love of God, eight hundred years earlier the Etruscans believed Tages manifested to teach the Will of Tinia. We may moralise on the merits or the two religions, the Truth we shall never know.

Tinia, God of the sky and storm, was a mountain God like Indra, Jehovah, Zeus and Jupiter, whom we believe to represent Spacemen; he hurled thunderbolts but unlike Zeus required permission from the Celestial Council or Higher Gods to hurl a second or third thunderbolt since this weapon was so devastating like the terrible nuclear-blasts mentioned in those Sanskrit Classics. The Celestial Council seems an 'etruscanised' version of Zeus and his family on
Mount
Olympus
; the Higher Gods are hidden or concealed, perhaps they were Beings ruling other planets, no one knows.

An important feature in Etruscan religion was the role played by Geniuses, intermediaries between the Gods and men. Tages had a feminine rival called Vergoia, a nymph like the Sibyl whose Books of Prophecy were preserved at the Temple of Apollo in Rome; whether she was a Spacewoman is doubtful, if not, Vergoia must certainly have been an advanced psychic possibly inspired by Extraterrestrials since for centuries the Etruscans held her in the highest esteem. Like ancient peoples all over the world the Etruscans feared and propitiated elementals, gnomes and nymphs who were believed to meddle in human affairs. The Etruscans believed in life after death, magic and astrology sharing much of the cosmic wisdom of the Babylonians. They imagined a sympathy between the macrocosm and the microcosm, the heavens, the earth, the individual, having organs corresponding to one another; a most profound conception of the relation between the Universe and Man, which presupposes a recondite psycho-science of vast antiquity inherited from some ancient civilisation or taught by Spacemen.

The haruspices or soothsayers examined the entrails, particularly the liver of victims, any blemish or peculiarity foreboded the Will of the Gods, since the entrails were considered the Cosmos in miniature, each part being governed by a particular Deity, its appearance was interpreted by the Libri Haruspicini. This divination practised for thousands of years by the Babylonians confounds us today. Perhaps the Ancients treasured some cosmic secret we have lost. Even our own cynical, scientific century is not without its superstitions.

The pantheon of Etruscan Gods was headed by Tinia, Uni and Menvra, who under the names of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva later became the Capitoline triad at
Rome
. Pliny quoted Tuscan writers stating the heavens were divided among nine Gods, who manifested their Will by hurling thunderbolts at Earth. The celestial region whence the thunderbolt came, identified the God, his omen depended on the type of lightning and the object struck according to the precepts recorded in the Libri Fulgurales; Pliny himself believed thunderbolts originated from the planets Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Divination also followed the flight of birds, which may have symbolised Gods or Spacemen, still feared in race-memory as ruling the destinies of men.

This concern of the Etruscans with lightning, thunder and birds, celestial prodigies dominating for centuries every detail of daily life, astounds us in our Space Age as some irrational superstition quite astonishing for such a highly sophisticated society; then we realise that during the First Millennium BC peoples all over the Earth scanned the heavens with an anxiety comparable to our world-wide radar-watch today. There must have been some overwhelming reason for such concern with the skies. Had the Etruscans cause to associate thunderbolts with Gods hurling down destruction to Earth like those Celestials in the 'Mahabharata' launching nuclear-like blasts on Old India?

In the ninth century BC the 'Angels of the Lord' (Spacemen?) instructed Elijah to meet messengers from the King of Samaria, who worshipped Baal. The Prophet sat on top of a hill to prove he was a 'Man of God', he twice called down fire from heaven, each time to consume a Captain and fifty men. Such destruction from the skies once ravaged
Etruria
.

Pliny may give the probable explanation for the Etruscan awe of lightning; he states, 'Historical record also exists of thunderbolts being either caused by or vouch safed in answer to certain rites and prayers.’

There is an old story of the latter in
Tuscany
, when the portents, which they called Olta, came to the city of
Bolsena
when its territory had been devastated; it was sent in answer to the prayer of its King, Porsena (508 BC). Also before his time, as is recorded on the reliable authority of Lucius Piso in his
Annals I
, this was frequently practised by Numa, though when Tullius Hostilius copied him with incorrect ritual he was struck by lightning.  Bolsena, the richest town in
Tuscany
, was burnt by a thunderbolt evoking memories of
Sodom
and
Gomorrah
. Was Bolsena destroyed by Spacemen?

The Etruscans perhaps even more than the Jews were obsessed by concern for the Gods and their divine intervention in human affairs; a fact which may surprise many Christians who believe the Incarnation of Christ to be the unique manifestation of God in all history. Such powerful dominance of Etruscan minds for centuries could hardly have continued without some visible signs of the Gods themselves. Mystics may worship an abstract Deity but it is exceedingly doubtful whether the masses would worship Jehovah and Jesus, obey Buddha and Mahomet, had they never appeared before mankind.

Below the handle of a bronze bucket from Offido, Picena, is a relief of a winged Goddess; in the museum at Tarquinia stands a pair of winged horses found in an Etruscan temple there. Like the Egyptians, Babylonians and Greeks, the Etruscans used wings to symbolise Celestials from the skies; a winged Goddess depicted a Spacewoman, a winged horse a Spaceship. When the Spacemen eventually do land among us, our own imaginative artists will surely give them wings.

The huge family tombs of the Etruscans were usually frescoed with scenes of feasting, hunting, sport and family life. Though fatalistic, gluttonous and dreadfully cruel, curiously like the Aztecs of Mexico, the Etruscans reveled in almost oriental sensuality enjoying a bacchanalian debauch equalled only by their rivals in luxury, the Sybarites, who according to Athenaeus, invented the chamberpot so they could drink at public banquets without getting up. The immorality of the Etruscans scandalised the Romans, notorious for their own orgies. Athenaeus, a learned Greek grammarian from Naucralis in Egypt, who later lived in Rome about AD 230, wrote in his most entertaining
'Deipnosophistae'
or
'Banquet of the Learned
', a classic account of Etruscan license as the nobles lounged on their exquisitely embroidered couches fingering their heavy silver drinking-cups; his vivid description hardly concerns Spacemen but this barnyard morality of the Etruscans may afford some salutary warnings for our own society today.