Walking one afternoon along a road out of the ancient city you come to an ancient crossroads, 
from which one way continues on the road south towards Rome and the other leads up to a bare rocky outcrop. You take the road up to the ridge and the eye begins to take in a what appear to be the remains of a number of low buildings. As you come closer you see that each building has a stairway cut down into the rock, the stairs leading down into what appear to be cellars.
Approach carefully, it is easy to scratch ones arm or leg on the thorny vegetation and rough volcanic tufi rock as you make your way down, or to slip on the worn steps. Go in. Here – 
– you are stepping into another world, and what might not have been expected as you came down the steps to enter this chamber under the ground, you are also entering a zone of conflict. Immediately in front of you two naked men grip each other by the wrist over a large vessel. Their front feet are firmly planted on the ground. Legs are tensed. Battle has been joined and both of them are bringing all their strength into their hunched shoulders, from where the fight will be won or lost.
How will the contest end? How will the conflict be resolved? You do not know, nor do you know about the vessel they fighting ‘over’, or what it contains. All you know is that in a large bowl of distinctive shape and design, there is a liquid, but whether it will bring harm or well, you do not know. The liquid within the bowl could be something that brings the contestants a great benefit, perhaps it is even a reward for the victor. Or it might be something that could result in great harm. Perhaps the liquid has been brought to boiling within the second metalic vessel that is being heated below by a charcoal fire, a dangerous mix into which the victor will press down the loser’s arm and hand, from which terrible scarring neither arm nor hand will ever heal nor function ever be restored. Or worse, at the end of the contest, a fight to the death, a ritual sacrificial killing, the blood of the loser will be collected in the bowl.
You approach to look. The bowl you now see is filled with liquid mercury, but you cannot tell if it is hot or cold, nor whether harm or healing will come from touching it. The liquid is still, motionless, a silver screen in which all you will see is the perfect reflection of your own face. You must make your own decision whether to dare to touch this liquid or not.
When you have decided,
then raise your eyes to look at the great sealed door on the far wall of the chamber you are standing in.
Here in this place, that is also called the Tomb of the Auguries, La Tomba degli Auguri, arms have always been locked in conflict. Perhaps, this comes as a surprise, here in this solemn underground place, where you stand before your God or whatever name you choose to give to the mystery that is hidden behind those great red closed doors.
Not that you are free to choose names. As you are not always free to go peacably, which is why at clefts in the road conflicts always arise. You had been warned, or should have been, when you first came to the crossroads, the point when one turns into two, and you were asked to decide which way to go. Were you going to continue on the straight road to Rome, or were you going to make your winding way up on to this rocky outcrop and enter this chamber? You chose the winding way. Perhaps you will try to say, you were sidetracked or seduced by this story. Real or apparant choices, the choices you made to imagine the liquid in the vessel, the decisions you made to approach it and look in, and then to raise your eyes and look towards the great read door – Crimes and errors! – every cleft produces conflict, a war of words that always ends in trouble. The young man on the road to Thebes falls into an argument with a stranger. Where? Where the road crosses the river, another kind of crossroads, and the two men argue over who has the right to cross the river first. First a War of Words, the argument becomes a struggle, and eventually in the fight the younger man wins out over the older, slowly pushing him down under the water until he drowns. Only much later does the young man find out that the older man was his own father. What does he do then? Puts out his eyes so that he can never see beyond those great red doors. So the tragic story of Oedipus ends.
In the Tomb of the Auguries, it is also a War of Words that is being engaged in through the physical struggle of the two men, but their struggle is held in a different way to the tragic father and son Oedipus story. Behind the younger of the naked men (the one without a beard) two older bearded men raise one arm, wrists extended, hands open to the sky. These are the Augurers. They watch the flight of birds, through which flight they are told among other things the outcome of the struggle between the two men. Prescient, their extended hands exert a restraint over present time, so that the struggle between the two men never advances because its outcome is already known. No crime. No error. So violence is never done.
You are free to approach the two naked men. Let your eyes wander over their tensed and slightly trembling bodies. Observe how their muscles groups are locked in struggle. If you look closely, you will see the sweat beginning to show on their skin and a drip forming on the younger man’s chin. Put out your finger to touch it, and then bring your finger to your tongue to taste the salty tang.
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