- Ingrid D. Rowland –
Etruscan domination. The bishop’s crozier was an Etruscan priestly staff, the lituus, before
it became a shepherd’s crook. The Pope wears red shoes because Etruscan patricians wore
red shoes, passing their privilege down to Roman Senators, who passed it in turn to
Christian cardinals. Annius added plausible details: the keys of St. Peter, which symbolize
the ability to do and undo all things in earth and heaven, were clearly the same keys as
those of Janus, the god of doorways; hence Janus-Noah, not Peter, was the very fi rst Pope.
Noah drank too much because he was the inventor of wine – and Hebrew yayin, the word
for wine, was obviously the same word as Janus.
He made fl attering observations about his Spanish sponsors. The Borgia coat of arms
featured a heraldic bull (originally it had been an ox, but the ambitious Rodrigo restored
the beast’s lost masculinity when he became a cardinal). Annius identifi ed this creature
as the sacred Apis bull of ancient Egypt, the reincarnation of Osiris, thus pushing the
Borgia genealogy as far back in time as the founding of Viterbo. Spain itself was nearly
as old, a colony founded by the same Egyptian Hercules, nephew of Osiris, who had
helped his uncle establish Viterbo. Osiris, Isis, Egyptian Hercules, Noah-Janus and their
relatives had been a race of giants; as the Bible said, “There were giants in those days.”^24
In Viterbo and Rome, Annius and his ideas captured people’s imaginations so
thoroughly that we can still see their effects today. The city seal of Viterbo still uses the
four sacred letters, FAVL, by which he had identifi ed its early, separate settlements: Fanum,
Arbanum, Vetulonia, and Longula. In Rome, the Borgia Apartments, Pope Alexander’s
living quarters, still glitter with the paintings Bernardino Pinturicchio executed between
1492 and 1494. Alexander’s successor, Julius II, loathed his predecessor, but he put equal
faith in the tales of Janus and Noah – his favorite theologian, the Augustinian friar
Egidio Antonini, was another native of Viterbo, and an enthusiastic follower of Annius.
Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling begins its great chronicle of human salvation with
the creation of the universe, and ends with three stories about Noah: the landing of the
Ark, the drunkenness of Noah, and his sacrifi ce of thanksgiving, the precursors, according
to Annius, of the Church, the sacramental wine, and the Mass.
Annius himself died on September 15, 1502, one year before his sponsor, Pope
Alexander. One eighteenth-century author claimed that he had been poisoned by Cesare
Borgia, though there is no contemporary evidence that this is so.^25 He may not have been
well: a marginal note in one copy of his great book reports, “this man went insane twice
and died in chains,” that is, in the Renaissance equivalent of a straitjacket.^26
The friar’s ideas had never met universal approval. None of his surviving inscriptions,
for instance, would convince a modern archaeologist that they are what Annius took them
to be. The broken alabaster circle with the decree of Holy Roman Emperor Desiderius
from the year 776 is carved in a curving script known as “Beneventan” that is otherwise
known only in manuscripts (Fig. 61.6). The Egyptian stele combines two heads in bas
relief and a sculpted vine; its original backing incorporated a grave marker inscribed
in Hebrew and dated 1409, evidently removed from Viterbo’s Jewish cemetery; this is
now displayed separately (Fig. 61.7).^27 No one but Annius has ever reported seeing the
inscription that glowed from within.
The literary texts preserved in his 1498 Commentary are equally dubious. Despite their
varied age and varied authorship, they are remarkably uniform in their prose style, which
in turn is extremely close to the style of the comments themselves. Skeptical readers like
Erasmus began to suggest that Annius had written the whole compendium, from Berosus
the Chaldaean to Fabius Pictor to Metasthenes the Persian.