C H A N N E L S T O A N C I E N T R O M E
An Adventure in Mediumship
Closely Examined
by Filippo Liverziani
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Preface 2
Chapter 1 MARCUS FLAVIUS 2
Chapter 2 OXILIA 34
Chapter 3 PROCULUS 42
Chapter 4 OPIMIUS 56
Chapter 5 LIVIUS 67
Chapter 6 LUCRETIUS 78
Chapter 7 HORATIUS 94
Chapter 8 FINAL REMARKS 103
Bibliographical Appendix 114
P R E F A C E
Continuing our mediumistic experiments in psychic writing (which I reported in Colloqui con l'altra dimensione, i.e. Conversations with the Other Side, Edizioni Mediterranee, Rome 1987), my wife and I had the quite unexpected gift of thirty-one communications with characters or entities who described themselves as discarnate souls of ancient Romans: six of them claimed to have lived in the first century A.D., the seventh even earlier, at the time of the Second Punic War, in which he said to have taken part.
This matter seemed to us so strange and almost incredible that we decided to push these experiments to the limit of their possibilities, not least in order to obtain a maximum of information about matters outside our previous knowledge: we would then try to check this information, hoping to obtain an element of confirmation if it proved to be correct. Later we subjected both the content and the form of expression of these communications to a rigorous analysis, considering them right down to their least detail.
As we pushed this analysis ahead, as the data of the verifications began to accumulate, we not only became aware of the profoundly human motives of these communications, but also realized that they were entirely consistent with what had hitherto been known about the world of ancient Rome and thus seemed wholly plausible.
Even the information that the seven presumed Roman souls gave us about their existence after death and the spiritual itinerary associated with this existence proved to be wholly in harmony with the contents already brought out by our previous researches and, indeed, with what one might call the more reliable mediumistic literature.
We therefore deemed it worthwhile to collect all the communications into a single volume and to submit them, together with our comments and the results of our verifications, to the free and unfettered judgment of our readers.
Chapter 1
M A R C U S F L A V I U S
Though I would not have expected a soldier of ancient Rome to express himself in the style of one of Livi's orations, I was hardly prepared for his Latin being as unmitigated a disaster as the language with which Marcus Flavius opened his communication with us.
It was about 9.30 p.m. on 3 February 1987 when Bettina and I commenced our 273rd psychic writing séance. As soon as we had taken our seats at the table and placed our right hands (or, rather, our respective index and middle fingers) on the upturned glass, it began to move, rather slowly at first and then at a certain speed, making its way five times across the board and all its letters. We usually refer to this phase as "letter study". One may wonder whether it represents a kind of memorization of the letters and their positions, though practice has shown that the operation is not by any means indispensable and it may therefore be no more than a ceremonial that in some way strengthens the contact between the newly arrived entity and ourselves. It may well be that it is a mixture of the two and serves both purposes. But that is all I can say about it.
Having finished this preliminary study, the running-in phase as it were, the entity is at our disposal. The most polite way of starting a conversation with unknown people is undoubtedly that of introducing oneself and I therefore invariably commence by mentioning both our names (even though we have been told that entities can read our thoughts and do not set any great store by names). "Bettina and Filippo here", I therefore began. "From Rome. Who do we have the pleasure of talking to?" The answer was slow in coming and I therefore repeated my question: "Who are you?" After some further hesitations, the glass began to move in a somewhat more decided manner and successively stopped very briefly on four letters of the alphabet. By way of answer we were thus given a word of rather mysterious meaning: Agit.
"What does that mean?", I asked. The answer was no less sybilline: Memo memento agit. I had the impression that the first two words represented an attempt to say a single word, albeit a little more clearly the second time (though later I thought that the entity might well have wanted to say memoria, a rather more abstract and less frequently used word that had not been fully remembered, replacing it by the more concrete and common memento: "Remember! Remember to do this or that". Ago means "I act"; Agit "he acts". Somebody or something acts, therefore. But how, and in what way?
These were questions I put to myself, for aloud I had not yet said anything at all. All the same, the entity resumed its communication, which I shall quote literally and with all its errors, spelling included: volumta mea non est clara ("My will is not clear"). "How is it that you speak Latin?" Making a great effort to recall the days when I studied Latin and bucking up all my courage, I decided that I would make an attempt to ask my next question in that language: "Cur latine loqueris?" Idioma meo est. ("It is my language").
At least for the moment, I do not want to add to the discomfiture of my readers by afflicting them also with my own Latin phrases. Let me say right away that I only tried to formulate the first few questions in Latin and soon resumed speaking in Italian: I know that entities can read thoughts and had this confirmed when, for experimental purposes, I spoke English to an Italian entity who, in life, had no knowledge of that language at all; and also on the many occasions when I spoke to English or American entities in my own tongue, which they all said they had never learnt in their earthly life.
But let us continue. "Can you tell us something about yourself?", I asked our invisible interlocutor, who replied: Memento meo non fuit (something like: "I don't remember). "What can you tell us about yourself?", I insisted. Vita pulchra in coelis ("Life in the heavens is beautiful"). Fine: that is much clearer and also much better Latin; and, what is more, it is also good news for all of us, doomed (to die) as we are.
I could go on to report the whole of this conversation of February 3. But my readers will probably have been left wondering what our friend had wanted to say when he used those very obscure words at the beginning. At the next séance two days later, on February 5, I asked Marcus Flavius what he had wanted to convey by memo (or memento) agit and volunta[s] mea non est clara. Here is the translation of the explanation he gave us: Like memory I act because my will is not clear. "What do you mean by 'like memory'?". Memories, recollections. "In other words", as I tried to clarify further, "you wanted to say: I act in a spontaneous manner and with the same spontaneity with which memory operates. Is that right?" Yes. "Not deliberately the way the will acts". No. In fact, Marcus Flavius had come chance impetus (as he himself told us, seemingly anticipating the style of modern telegrams). There he was, happily in his sphere and deceased for more than l900 years, when all of a sudden a contact was established between him and us, and Marcus thus made us the involuntary and quite unexpected gift of a greatly appreciated visit, which has since given rise to a beautiful friendship.
Our readers may wonder why the sentences were now coming through in Italian, and it is perhaps as well to explain this before going any further. Many experiments have already shown us that, though entities generally limit themselves to formulating pure thoughts, the simple fact that these have to pass through our psyche ensures that they will eventually take shape in our own language, even though the entity may not speak it at all. I myself have often taught this technique to communicating entities, because it enables them to express themselves more readily, more quickly, and also with much greater wealth of vocabulary.
There is another thing that should be made clear here once and for all: from the moment of entering into us, and by virtue of that very fact, the entity expresses itself in the last resort as if it had suddenly acquired the same mastery that we have of our own tongue.
Though this may seem very strange to us, it is a fact that can be noted time and time again. And it is precisely this fact that enables the entity to participate in a discussion not only of the global content of the communication, but also to talk about individual words or commas as if it knew our language just as well as we.
Having clarified this point, we can now go ahead with our account of what Marcus Flavius told us about himself in the course of our first two sessions. On the second occasion he gave a better explanation of the things that had not been very clear on the first. Henceforth we shall attribute each quotation to the particular séance from which it is taken, identifying the first and second session (as also all others) by their ordinal numbers. As in the previous volume, we shall use Roman numerals for this purpose, now particularly appropriate.
Our newfound friend introduced himself as Marcus Flavius. Where did he come from? What was his nationality? Italicus (Séance I). More precisely, what was his place of origin? Much later, in séance VII, he was to tell us: Natus est in suburbio Capuae ("He was born in the suburb of Capua").
I did, of course, ask him to tell me the epoch in which he had lived: could he remember any emperor or consul or other famous name? He answered: Imperator Tiberius. Just a moment or two before that he had given me a date that did not correspond to the reign of the emperor whom we commonly call Tiberius, but appeared to relate to a somewhat later period, and I had immediately drawn his attention to this incongruency (I). In the course of the next occasion I asked him: "Have you heard of the Emperor Augustus?" Yes, came his reply. "Tiberius was emperor after Augustus. Was he your emperor?" No. "Then came Caligula. Can you remember?" Yes. "And who was emperor after Caligula?" Tiberius. Not the one you mentioned. "Would you be referring to Tiberius Claudius?" Yes: Claudius (II).
Now that the answers given by Marcus Flavius are becoming seemingly more articulate, I have to point out that, though I always transcribe each and every word with absolute fidelity, the punctuation marks are always added by myself. Only a question mark is to be found on our letterboard, and even that is not always used by our entities when formulating a question. Whenever a question mark should be used and is omitted by the entity, I will therefore add it if the context obviously so requires. The same is true as far as exclamation marks are concerned. On the letterboard we also have a full stop, but the entities use it only to make dots: in that case they will make the glass circle round the box three times. All the other punctuation marks (full stop, comma, colon and semicolon) are therefore added by myself.
Coming back to the incongruency I pointed out a moment or two ago, the Tiberius to whom Marcus referred is evidently the Emperor Tiberius Claudius, more commonly known only by the latter name. I had already reached this conclusion on my own account in the interval between the first and the second séance, since the date in question (about which I shall have more to say before long) has to be placed in the reign of Claudius. How is it, then, that Marcus calls him Tiberius? During the interval between the two séances I had also been able to recall to mind something that I had completely forgotten, a detail to which I had never paid a great deal of attention: Tiberius was the praenomen of Claudius. (Readers may recall that the Roman praenomen corresponded to our personal name or forename, while the nomen indicated the family). The emperor we normally call Tiberius, i.e. the immediate successor of Augustus, was officially called Tiberius Caesar Augustus, though in actual practice he was referred to, as we have seen, by his prename. The same is true as regards his successor Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus: nicknamed and known to history as Caligula (on account of the military boots, or caligae, that he already wore as a small boy), he was in his day more commonly called by his prename, Gaius. That was also how he was designated by the historians of post-Augustinian days, while the adjective Caianus was used quite generally to indicate anything relating to Caligula. Caianus was also used to denote a supporter of the emperor. Caligula was eventually succeeded by Claudius, whose official title was Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus. He was the second emperor of the series to bear the prename of Tiberius, which was also the name by which he had been known before he became emperor, during the long years of his emargination, when he was deemed (quite wrongly) as the family fool and had dedicated himself exclusively to his beloved historical studies. The successor of Claudius, once again, was commonly known by his prename, with which he also passed into history: indeed, Nero occupies first place in his official title, which was Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus. It is well known that Claudius was the nomen of the gens Claudia. There is no reason why we should not think that Claudius was commonly known as Tiberius, especially during the early years of his reign, which coincide with the time in which our Marcus, enrolled in the army, left for Mauretania and remained buried there for the rest of his days. Tiberius (abbreviated Ti) is in any case the first name that appears on inscriptions (though Marcus Flavius may not have read these very avidly) and on coins (which probably attracted his interest rather more readily), to be immediately followed by Claudius. When I asked him who his emperor was, Marcus may well have wanted to answer Tiberius Claudius and he was probably searching his memory for the name Claudius when I, completely forgetful of the fact that Tiberius was the prename of that emperor, interrupted him to contest an answer that, even if one wants to consider it incomplete, was actually quite correct.
It is becoming more and more clear to me that it is not by any means easy to make a start with my account: problems crowd in on all sides and, even though they can be treated in greater detail later on, they must at least be briefly mentioned right away. May I therefore ask my readers to curb their impatience and to bear with me a little longer.
Marcus Flavius remembered a ship (navis) that took him to Africa, but then, to indicate his actual landing, he was to use a very strange word: approduo. This neologism immediately gives the impression of being a kind of halfway house between the Italian "approdo" and something that could be the corresponding word in dog Latin. Let me explain right away that dog Latin consists of the use of latinized Italian words, the latinization being performed by simply adding Latin endings, often with rather comic effects. That an ancient Roman should use dog Latin in the course of a mediumistic séance may seem rather suspicious at first sight. But the previous experiences I have accumulated in this matter suggest that one should hesitate before liquidating the matter with some ironic remark, which would come all too easily to one's lips. I have noted that when an entity communicates in a language other than our own (in English, French or Spanish, for example), his modes of expression tend to become more proper and correct when we, the human channels, have a good knowledge of the language in question. What happens, then, when the entity needs a term that we either do not know in his language or find it difficult to remember? There are two ways in which this word may come out: it may either be formulated as pure thought and then become translated into our own language by virtue of the simple fact of having to pass through us; or, alternatively, it may present itself dressed in the same style as the other words, that is to say, in the style of the language used by the soul communicating with us. A partial dog Latin is therefore quite possible, just as in other cases one may have dog Spanish, the kind that is often attributed to South Americans in our jokes and funny stories, or the kind of "dog" German used in "Sturmtruppen", a comic strip in which Italian words are simply given German-sounding endings. The same thing tends to happen with the Italian dialects: thus, an old Roman will talk to us in reasonably good and genuine Roman dialect, while a Neapolitan, given the fact that our is essentially limited to old songs and dialectal theatre, will express himself in a Neapolitan dialect that is only partially genuine, with the remainder strangely Romanized, almost as if the flavour of a true vernacular had to be preserved in some way or other.