Alien Space Gods Of Ancient Greece and Rome (42 page)

Tiny ears, low forehead, black eyelashes, finally eyes of singular shape, under whose eyelids the cornea still appeared. Even the nostrils were still intact and so soft as to vibrate at the simple touch of a finger. Her red lips half-closed small and white teeth, her scarlet tongue near her palate. Her cheeks, tongue, neck, seemed to palpitate. Her arms hung down intact from her shoulders, so that had you wished you could have moved them. Her nails still adhered firmly to her splendid, long, outstretched hands, also if you had tried, you would not have succeeded in detaching them. Her breast, stomach and womb were on the contrary compressed at one side and after removal of the aromatic crust they decomposed. Her back, sides, and buttocks instead had conserved their contours and marvellous shapes, just like her thighs and legs which in life had presented even greater prizes than her face.

'In short, this must have concerned the roost beautiful young woman of noble family during the period when
Rome
was at its greatest splendour. However the majestic monument under the crypt had been destroyed many centuries or so ago, without there remaining even an inscription. Also the sarcophagus did not bear any sign. We know neither the name of the young woman nor her origin nor her age.’

Old Bartolemco Ponle five hundred years ago in transparent delight paints a word-portrait of this young beauty which surely thrilled Leonardo da Vinci when he learned of this wonder. General belief attributed the body of Tullia,
Cicero
's daughter, who against the wish of her father married the ambiguous Cornelius Dolabella, and who died still young in 47 BC. The Romans were in close contact with Egypt; Cornelius Dolabella was with Julius Caesar at the Court of Cleopatra Mara Calabri in touching words suggests that as a fine act of love the distraught husband might have found some Egyptian slave in Rome able to embalm his lovely wife's body. As for the lamp remaining lit for 1300 years Professor Zakharis Ghoneim,
Cairo
.archaeologist, is quoted as saying that the pitch used for embalming was strangely radioactive, the lamp could have burnt radioactive dust which filled the room. Pope Innocent
III
is believed to have had the body buried again in secret to avoid troublesome problems for the Church. All that remains of Tullia is the careful drawing of the body in the Florentine's letter showing him to be not only a fine writer but an excellent artist.

Cicero translated the much-esteemed astronomical poem 'Phaenomena' by Aratus based on the works of Eudoxus, in the following century Seneca in 'Quaestiones Naturales' and Pliny the Elder in 'Historia Naturalis' wrote fascinating comments on the astronomical theories of the Greeks though they quoted little of Roman origin.

The Romans knew the magnifying properties of glass. Cicero tells that he had seen the entire 'Iliad' written on a skin of such miniature size that it could be rolled up inside a nut-shell; short-sighted Nero watched the gladiators in the Circus through a small ring containing a glass; mariners sometimes used an instrument called the 'nauscopita' to see distant shores. Like the Babylonians the Romans probably used telescopes for celestial observations; during many centuries the sky-watchers may have made fundamental discoveries recorded in works long since lost The Romans accepted the theorems of Euclid and teachings of Aristotle, untroubled by theories they concentrated on applied science evolved mainly from experience and commonsense, by trial and error they eventually built those beautiful villas, baths and aqueducts adorning their world. The priests toyed with electricity, craftsmen invented useful gadgets, many keen minds like Hiero of Alexandria in AD 100 must have played with steam kettles before James Watt but the absence of organised industry and the abundance of slave-labour discouraged the search for other sources of power.

Sergius Crata, a contemporary of Caesar, is said to have invented central heating. Vitruvius dedicated to Augustus his famous ten volumes on architecture, plumbing, heating, canals and harbours. Celsus in AD 20 compiled an encyclopedia on Science; only his treatise 'De Medicine' remains. In the reign of Tiberius an exile brought to
Rome
a cup 'which he dashed upon the marble pavement and it was not crushed or broken by the fall. Stained glass was found in a room at
Pompeii
; it seems not unlikely that some glass-maker practising his centuries-old craft might by chance have manufactured unbreakable glass, a process he could not repeat. Pliny confirms the use of asbestos, and among the 20,000 facts in his 'Historia Naturalis' details the pharmaceutical properties of hundreds of flowers and plants showing profound knowledge of botany accumulated by the Ancients through thousands of years. Plutarch and other writers narrating campaigns in the East make frequent reference to the inflammable nature of oil used for that fearsome weapon, the unextinguisbable Greek fire like napalm.

The Romans were great engineers; victorious Generals owed much to their military technicians, who devised such deadly efficient catapults, siege-towers and engines of war, they soon learned from
Carthage
the vital lesson of sea- power and built swift, powerful galleys to master the
Mediterranean
. The Roman roads built for military use kept their Empire together, the speed with which the legions could be switched from
Spain
to
Persia
, the
Thames
to the
Danube
, paralysed their enemies. Trade followed the Eagles, the Imperium became a 'Common Market’ with uniform currency and law enabling merchants to bring their wares from the East and West for the people of
Rome
; in their wake wandered scholars spreading the classic culture of Antiquity. For more than a thousand years after the fall of Rome Latin was the universal language linking the intellectuals of
Europe
. Pottery found in
India
, coins in
China
, prove that Roman influence spanned the world; some coins unearthed in
America
and Romance words in Indian dialects are even alleged to prove that Roman ships apparently crossed the
Atlantic
, possibly blown there by storms. In the first century BC the Chinese Emperor Wu Ti dispatched a certain Chang Ch'ier to the West hoping to form an alliance against the Huns; the Romans called China 'Serica' or 'The Land of Silk'; silk, peaches and apricots known as 'Chinese fruits’ reached Italy and Greece via the long caravan-routes from the East, Augustus sent ambassadors to China, memory of these may have inspired Marco Polo's epic travels from Venice to that fabulous Court of Kublai Khan. A popular Cambodian tradition concerns the Prince of Rama attributing to him the foundation of the great Buddhist temple at Anghor Wat; he is said to have come from the western end of the world, presumably from
Rome
.

Spacemen during the Augustan Age were apparently content with random surveillance. A 'torch' streaked across Roman skies from south to north making night seem as bright as day; a comet hovered over Rome for several days in 12 BC, then finally split into flashes resembling 'torches'. Such celestial phenomena may be recognised by astronomers as meteors, they could have been UFOs like those nine suns which in 9 BC appeared over
Kyushu
on 10th February throwing
Japan
into chaos. Spaceships visiting the
Far East
would probably visit the West and survey
Rome
.

Five years later in 4 BC a new 'star' is said to have shone in the
Middle East
. The sudden appearance of a Star suggests a Supernova, though its advent was not recorded by Hindu or Chinese astronomers, who kept ceaseless watch on the skies, nor by Pliny, Ptolemy, Josephus or Julius Obsequens, reliable chroniclers of this period. The 'star' was alleged to move and stop over
Palestine
; genuine stars seem fixed, the only wandering stars are the planets which move slowly in precise orbits. Astrologers suggest this apparent 'star’ may have been a conjunction of the planets Mars, Jupiter and Venus, though these would not suddenly appear and move as one body.

It is profoundly significant that in this age of great writers and astronomers the only reference to the mysterious 'star' was made by an elderly Jew about eighty years later; he himself was probably not born when this 'star’ allegedly appeared then later disappeared. Thirty years were to elapse before this particular year, 749 after the foundation of
Rome
, was to have such tremendous significance for him and the world.

Matthew wrote:

‘... and, lo, the star which they saw in the cast went before them till it came and stood over where the young child was.'

The only celestial object to appear suddenly close enough to the Earth to be visible within only a small radius, which moves guiding followers, then stands still, is an intelligently controlled Spaceship.

In a stable in Bethlehem Jesus was born.

The ancient North still broods in magic, its aura of enchantment allures explorers even today; those solitary wastes in silence fill men's souls with mystery shrouding that world of wonder lost long ago. Poets in Antiquity hailed the North as Hyperborea, Land of the Gods, its radiant skies illumined realms of fabulous splendour where Immortals basked in eternal Spring cut off from mankind by a barrier of ice; Apollo and other Celestials winged across the snows to revel there.

The Greeks beside their warm Mediterranean marvelled at that mysterious region beyond Mount Olympus, abode of heroes, wizards, giants, dragons, waging fantastic wars in Earth and sky; from the North-East the Phoenicians brought those precious amulets of amber, elektron, alive with electricity. Dim race-memories echoed that titanic cataclysm which had shattered those fair lands of the North to desolation driving the Achaeans down to the Peloponnese; legends told how the sun changed its course, a comet shook the Earth itself to end a World Age; the climate cooled, the Gods fled from the chaos home to the stars leaving Man to build civilisation again. All the Ancients in East and West shared the same age-old story preserved in religion or epic romance; such sophistication distorted the past, the stark truth of that cosmic disaster is told in the myths of
Scandinavia
.

The wondrous realm in the North was completely swept away by the last Ice Age now dated by geologists as about 10,000 BC probably caused by that sudden cataclysm which submerged Atlantis; mammoths found trapped in ice prove the temperature fell quickly suggesting some cosmic catastrophe. Eskimos believe that thousands of years ago their ancestors were ferried by huge metallic birds from
Central Asia
,
Ceylon
and
Mongolia
to
Greenland
, arousing speculation as to why the Spacemen transported them to such inhospitable land when surely more pleasant spots would have welcomed them. Perhaps this exodus happened before the ice came.

The few survivors suffered shocking readjustment to their frozen world, legends distorted down the centuries remembered those rulers of the golden past as Gods; sometimes the Arctic ice would melt yielding most ancient treasures from the civilisation once gracing this wilderness. Men became nomadic hunters; millennia later, as the glaciers receded their descendants slowly followed the reindeer northward to re-people the
Scandinavian Peninsula
. Tools of bones and flints reveal exquisite excellence, artistic rock-carvings show that these early Neolithic peoples shared the impressive intelligence characterising those splendid Cro-Magnons in
France
and
Spain
. Studies of pollen below deep bogs prove that luxuriant forests were felled to provide land for agriculture, the beginnings of civilisation.