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I have placed the setting of this story in an Etruscan village in Campania, under the reign of Vespasian.1
There must have been a large number of such villages, but the inhabitants were, in general, ignorant of their origin.
The characters I am putting on stage have kept a few traditions, but no one will expect to find them similar to their ancestors of the times of the Lucumons.2 They have mixed Etruscan, Greek, Roman and Asiatic legends, customs and rites strangely.
Then again, their race is not pure: the Latins as well as Hellenes, and Oriental slaves, have transformed their language, their tastes and their own names to a greater or lesser extent. It is, however, an Etruscan population. The reader who has some erudition will perceive that clearly, but it is easy to please that reader; it is the other that I would like to reach, the one who knows about Etruscans what he has learned vaguely in Roman history. I am addressing this small advertisement to him, in order that he might mistrust memories of school, for the sake of criticism; he must convince himself that he knows nothing about Etruscans. In truth, no one knows any more, but, all the same, in order to appreciate this story, let him make a distinction between his “pure” ignorance and the perverted ignorance of those who have studied the matter at length.