The eighth book in the Nic Costa series, <em><a href="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/p1010164-tm.jpgBooks/Costa/Blue%20Demon/bluedemon.html" target="_blank">The Blue Demon</a>,</em> is published this Friday so let me take a little time here this week to explain how this book came about.

<a href="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/p1010126.jpg"><img style="float:right;padding-left:4px;" src="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/p1010126-tm.jpg" alt="P1010126.JPG" width="250" height="187" /></a>Ideas don't come out of nowhere. On the other hand they're not easy to chase either. My attitude is to put myself in a receptive frame of mind and go somewhere they're likely to hit me -- Italy usually. The starting point for this book probably occurred years ago when I first walked into a lovely and often neglected museum called the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_Giulia" target="_blank">Villa Giulia</a> in Rome, right.

This was a pleasure palace built by a somewhat dodgy pope, Julius III. Today it is the home of Italy's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Etruscan_Museum" target="_blank">National Etruscan Museum</a>, and houses the most astonishing collection of artefacts from the lost Etruscan civilisation.

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<a href="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/800px-banditaccia_sarcofago_degli_sposi.jpg"><img style="float:right;padding-left:4px;" src="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/800px-banditaccia_sarcofago_degli_sposi-tm.jpg" alt="800px-Banditaccia_Sarcofago_Degli_Sposi.jpg" width="250" height="150" /></a>I knew very little about the Etruscans at the time, except that in Robert Graves's <em>I Claudius</em> we have the learned, crippled emperor-to-be bemoaning the loss of Etruscan civilisation and culture two thousand years ago (Graves was not making this up by the way). Being the curious type I then read a bit about the Etruscans and was stunned by what I found: a civilisation that predated ancient Rome and in many ways gave that culture, which eventually conquered and assimilated it, many of the early skills that allowed it to flourish.

The Romans destroyed Etruscan civilisation almost completely. What's left of Etruscan culture today -- much of it in the Villa Giulia -- shows us the magnitude of that loss. It was a sophisticated society, rich in art and music. And what's left? Exhibits in museums mainly, though if you take a car journey north of Rome, into the area where Lazio borders on Tuscany, you can find more. The little town of Tarquinia in particular has some stunning tombs, many of them open to the public, with rich paintings and a haunting atmosphere.

<a href="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/p1010164.jpg"><img style="float:right;padding-left:4px;" src="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/p1010164-tm.jpg" alt="P1010164.JPG" width="250" height="187" /></a>I went to Tarquinia trying to hunt down this book. There I marvelled at the long-dead figures dancing on walls, went to the wonderful local museum, talked to people. Here are some of the things I discovered during that early stage of research.
<ul>
	<li>The Etruscan language still exists in a few fragments.</li>
	<li>One of them is an Egyptian funeral shroud now in Serbia which was made out of old Etruscan documents -- so little did Rome value Etruscan literature they used it for wrapping corpses.</li>
	<li>Another is an extraordinary item called the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liver_of_Piacenza" target="_blank">Liver of Piacenza</a>, a life-sized bronze model of a sheep's liver engraved with strange symbols. It was used as a training device for haruspices, priests who foretold the future from the entrails of animals.</li>
	<li>Among the closed tombs at Tarquinia is one called The Tomb of The Blue Demon. Academics argue about The Blue Demon's meaning. But 'he' clearly represents some new stage in the development of the thinking of the Etruscans. Until he turns up on the scene the funereal paintings are joyful. The Blue Demon, seen here, brings guilt and fear and terror with him. He's either the Devil or Rome, then threatening the Etruscan lands, or both.</li>
</ul>
Plenty there to think about. Too much in fact. If I just wanted to write about the Etruscans then maybe I could begin to encompass all this material. But history, in these books, matters principally in that it reflects the present. So at least some of this was to be junked.

But how do I put the Etruscans into a modern context? Once I thought about the other strand I wanted to weave into this book -- politics -- that soon became obvious. In modern terms the Etruscans were the victims of ethnic cleansing. Their identities, their religion, their culture was taken from them and obliterated. Plenty of politicians want to do that to their enemies. Plenty of people threatened that way respond in a form that defines them as terrorists or freedom fighters, depending on one's viewpoint.

I remembered something else I'd discovered in Rome a few years earlier. I had a hook, of which more tomorrow.