Tonans, with a thunderbolt in his hand.
There were twelve great "consenting gods," composing the council
of Tinia, and called "The Senators of Heaven." They were pitiless
beings, dwelling in the inmost recesses

2 Muller, Die Etrusker, buch iii. kap. iv. sects. 7-14.

of heaven, whose names it was not lawful to pronounce. Yet they
were not deemed eternal, but were supposed to rise and fall
together. There was another class, called "The Shrouded Gods,"
still more awful, potent, and mysterious, ruling all things, and
much like the inscrutable Necessity that filled the dark
background of the old Greek religion. Last, but most feared and
most prominent in the Etruscan mind, were the rulers of the lower
regions, Mantus and Mania, the king and queen of the under world.
Mantus was figured as an old man, wearing a crown, with wings at
his shoulders, and a torch reversed in his hand. Mania was a
fearful personage, frequently propitiated with human sacrifices.
Macrobius says boys were offered up at her annual festival for a
long time, till the heads of onions and poppies were substituted.3
Intimately connected with these divinities was Charun, their chief
minister, the conductor of souls into the realm of the future,
whose dread image, hideous as the imagination could conceive, is
constantly introduced in the sepulchral pictures, and who with his
attendant demons well illustrates the terrible character of the
superstition which first created, then deified, and then trembled
before him. Who can become acquainted with such horrors as these
without drawing a freer breath, and feeling a deeper gratitude to
God, as he remembers how, for many centuries now, the religion of
love has been redeeming man from subterranean darkness, hatred,
and fright, to the happiness and peace of good will and trust in
the sweet, sunlit air of day!

That a belief in a future existence formed a prominent and
controlling feature in the creed of the Etruscans4 is abundantly
shown by the contents of their tombs. They would never have
produced and preserved paintings, tracings, types, of such a
character and in such quantities, had not the doctrines they
shadow forth possessed a ruling hold upon their hopes and fears.
The symbolic representations connected with this subject may be
arranged in several classes. First, there is an innumerable
variety of death bed scenes, many of them of the most touching and
pathetic character, such as witnesses say can sc