A story was formerly repeated in Germany, after Father Angelo
Cortenoria, that the tomb of the hero of Clusium, Lars Porsena,
described by Varro, ornamented with a bronze head and bronze pendent
chains, was an apparatus for atmospheric electricity, or for conducting
lightning, (as were, according to Michaelis, the metal points on
Solomon's temple); but the tale obtained currency at a time when men
were much inclined to attribute to ancient nations the remains of a
supernaturally revealed primitive knowledge, which was soon after
obscured.
The most important notice of the relation between lightning and
conducting metals (a fact not difficult of discovery) still appears to
be that of Ctesias: he possessed two iron swords, presents from the King
Artaxerxes Mnemon, and from his mother Parysatis, which, when planted in
the earth, averted clouds, hail, and strokes of lightning. He had
himself seen the operation, for the king had twice made the experiment
before his eyes. The exact attention paid by the Etruscans to the
meteorological processes of the atmosphere in all that deviated from the
ordinary course of phenomena, makes it to be lamented that nothing has
come down to us from their Fulgur red books. The epochs of the
appearance of great comets, of the fall of meteoric stones, and of
showers of falling stars, would no doubt have been found recorded in
them, as in the more ancient Chinese annals, of which Edward Biot has
made use. Creuzer has attempted to show, that the natural features of
Etruria may have influenced the peculiar turn of mind of its
inhabitants. A "calling forth" of the lightning, which is ascribed to
Prometheus, reminds us of the pretended "drawing down" of lightning by
the Fulguratores. This operation consisted in a mere conjuration, and
may well have been of no more efficacy than the skinned ass' head,
which, in the Etruscan rites, was considered a preservative from danger
in their thunder-storms.--(_See Notes to Humboldt's Cosmos_, vol. ii.)
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