“The city of Perugia,” Prof. Bellucci writes, “is built upon a piece of land which was formed by a large delta of the primeval Tiber. In very early times (during the period known as pliocene) the Tiber, before running into the sea, formed in the central basin of Umbria an immense lake. The soil of which the actual plain of Umbria is now composed, and the numerous low hills which surround it, are made up either of river deposits such as sand and rubble left behind by the rush of waters, or else by clay deposits which slowly formed themselves in the quiet bosom of the lake. The date of these deposits is shown by the fossil remains which are found in them: elephants, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, stags, antelopes, hyenas, wild dogs, &c., all of which indicate a much warmer climate than that of the present day. In the period following on this, the great lake of Umbria began to empty itself; and as the soil washed gradually away, the waters forced a passage through the mountains below Todi, and from that time onward the Tiber gradually assumed its present course. The characteristic fauna of this second period distinguishes it from the first. Numerous remains found in the primitive gravel deposits of the Tiber prove the existence of man in our neighbourhood during both these periods (namely the paleolithic and neolithic). But the final drying up of the great lake basin or valley of Umbria was a very slow process, and even in Roman times the extent of these stagnant waters was so wide that the present town of Bastia on the road to Assisi was surrounded by them on every side and went by the name of Insula Romana. The final drainage of the lake was not completed till some time in 1400, when the river Chiagio burst through the rocky dykes under Torgiano and lowered the level of the water by four metres. Thus central Umbria at last assumed its present aspect. We stand upon the hill-top at Perugia where once thousands of years ago the turbid waters of the Tiber rushed along, and at our feet stretch the green and fertile fields of Umbria, all the fairer for the fertilising waters of that mighty lake which, in the dim and distant past, had covered them completely.”
We have no definite date or name for those first men who came to live in this strange marshy wilderness. We have only the relics of their patient industry. An inexhaustible store of arrow-heads and other barbarous stone implements is found in all the hills around Perugia, and splendid hatchet heads of jade upon the shores of Trasimene. No doubt these men lived in holes and caves, perhaps at the foot of this hill where the present city of Perugia stands, or a little to the west of it, but their history is dark and very far away. Dark too and far away, as far as written facts remain, is the history of that almost more mysterious race of men which followed on the prehistoric one, namely, the Etruscans.
This is no place in which to discuss the origin of that extraordinary people whose language and parentage, though they lived and laboured side by side with the most cultivated and inquisitive of European nations, is practically dead to us. It is enough at this point of our history to note that the Etruscans were the first to seal their personality, with the seal of a visible and tangible intelligence, upon this corner of the world, and it is quite probable that they made one of their earliest colonies upon the jutting spur of a line of hills which would have attracted them upon arrival. It is certain that in course of time Perugia became one of the most powerful cities of the Etruscan league. Her museums are full of the pottery, tombs, inscriptions, toys, and coins of the mysterious nation (see Museum, chapter XI.).
Innumerable myths grew up around the foreign people, and individual historians described their advent in individual places and pretty much at random. The earliest chroniclers of Perugia, ignoring the men who had perhaps existed for centuries before this unknown nation landed,—ignoring too, the other settlers,—pounced upon a plum so precious and romantic to stick into the pie of legends that they were concocting; they
peeled and stoned the plum to suit their fancy, and having done so, stuck it in with many others to swell the list of dubious tales in their long-winded manuscripts. As these chroniclers were nearly always monks, it was natural enough that they should form their shambling history on the one great history that they possessed, i.e., the Bible. To them the Etruscans were easily and most satisfactorily explained: they descended from the first man, Adam, and they were the sons of Noah. Nay, the monks made an even happier hit, for they declared that Noah in person climbed the Apennines and pitched his tent upon the spur of hill where the present city stands! We can well imagine the old monk Ciatti, one of the earliest historians of Perugia, sitting before his wooden desk upon some dreamy night in May, his Bible propped before him, all Umbria asleep beneath the stars outside his window, and compiling the following entrancing legends concerning the Etruscans and their leader: “Serious writers hold Janus to be the same as Noah, who alone among men saw and knew all things during the space of six hundred years before the Deluge and three hundred years after the Deluge. The ancient medals which show the two faces of Janus are engraved with a ship, to denote that he was Noah, who, entering an ark in the form of a ship, was saved by divine decree from the universal Deluge.”[1] Ciatti next goes on to give a delightful description of the arrival of Noah and his sons; “they penetrated,” he says, “into Tuscany,[2] where, fascinated by the loveliness of the country, the agreeable qualities of the soil, the gentle air and the abundance of the earth, they determined to remain; but feeling uncertain where they should fix their dwelling, they were advised by certain augurs to build Perugia on the spot where it now stands.” Some say that the name Perugia comes from the Greek word for “abundance.” Certainly Ciatti was able to weave this fact into his legendary web: “Whilst, waiting for the Augurs,” he writes, “two doves passed by them, flying to their nest, one carrying a branch loaded with olives and the other an ear of corn. Soon after there came a big wild boar carrying on his tusks a bunch of grapes. They took these signs to mean good omens, and they decided to build Perugia on the spot.”
Ciatti must have been an honest chronicler. Had we been given his early possibilities of making history in our own fashion, we must inevitably have told a credulous public that the ark itself rested upon the spurs of the Apennines and disgorged its contents on the hill where stands the present city of Perugia. But Ciatti withheld his hand from this, and we too must bare our heads before the fact of Ararat, and only hold to that of Noah, in his five-hundredth year or so, wandering unwearied forth to form a mighty nation on the coasts of Italy!