PART III:
CITY OF BRIDGES
Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.
Isaiah 55:1
CHAPTER 47
The History of the Etrurian Peninsula Volume II: The City of Bridges
All Etrurians share one belief: that the Ariminumese are not to be trusted. This prejudice does a great disservice to a remarkable race. The Serenissima is not a city, it is a miracle: a miracle built with refugee prayers using malarial sandbanks for foundations.
By the end of the first century Anno Domina, the Etruscans had taught their pet barbarian armies two things: to love gold and to hate Etruscans. When the Empire’s decline began, it was these barbarians who dealt the killing blow. The Etruscan peoples retreated to the safety of hilltops as the peninsula was invaded by successive tribes of swift horsemen with names as strange as their manners.
One group of Etruscans had a different strategy: these eccentrics took refuge in the Ariminumese lagoon, a place favoured only by hermits and water-fowl – and began harvesting the salt-fields and pickling fish. A dark, perilous age passed, and when dawn broke, Etrusca had become Etruria and the lagoon had become a city.11 In the centuries to follow, the Ariminumese were well situated to dominate the trade-routes of the Middle Sea. Today, though her colonies dot the Adriatic coast and her wealth is beyond reckoning, her motto proclaims that she will be virgin, unarmed, unwalled and unconquered always.12