We believe that lightning is caused by clouds colliding, whereas they believe that clouds collide in order to create lightning.

From Lost No More: An Etruscan Rebirth by John Noble Wilford.

Etruscan civilization, scholars have learned, was governed as a loose federation of 12 or perhaps 14 city-states, each controlled by oligarchies of the wealthy and guided by the gods. The philosopher Seneca, in the first century A.D., may have had an explanation for the Etruscans' inability to take charge of themselves and change.

''This is the difference between us Romans and the Etruscans,'' Seneca wrote. ''We believe that lightning is caused by clouds colliding, whereas they believe that clouds collide in order to create lightning. Since they attribute everything to gods, they are led to believe not that events have a meaning because they have happened, but that they happen in order to express a meaning.''