cs, and the cuneiform
characters of Assyria, and the runic inscriptions of Northern Europe,
the Etruscan language presents almost the only philological problem
that refuses to be solved. Thus when the air and the light of modern
investigation penetrated into the mystery which surrounded this
strange people, all that was most important had vanished; and only the
few ornaments of the tomb remained to tell us of a lost world of art,
literature, and human life which had perished not by internal
exhaustion, but had fallen before the arms of Rome in the full
maturity of its civilisation.

CHAPTER VIII

HOLED STONES AND MARTYR WEIGHTS

In the porch of the interesting old church of Sta. Maria in Cosmedin
near the Tiber is preserved a huge circular stone like a millstone. It
is composed of white marble, upwards of five feet in diameter, and is
finished after the model of the dramatic mask used in the ancient
theatres. In the centre is a round hole perforating the mass right
through, forming the mouth of the mask. It is called the Bocca della
Verita, and has given its name to the irregular piazza in which the
church is situated. It is so called from the use to which it has been
put from time immemorial, as an ordeal for testing the guilt or
innocence of an accused person. If the suspected individual on making
an affirmation thrust his hand through the hole and was able to draw
it back again, he was pronounced innocent; but if, on the contrary,
the hand remained fixed in the marble jaws, the person was declared to
have sworn falsely and was pronounced guilty. The marble mouth was
supposed by the superstitious to contract or expand itself according
to the moral character of the arraigned person. No reason has been
given why this singular marble mask should have been placed in this
church, nor is anything known of its previous history. Some have
conjectured that it served as an impluvium or mouth of a drain in the
centre of a court to let the water run off; and others regard it as
having been an ornament for a fountain, like the colossal mask of
marble out of the mouth of which a jet of water falls into a fountain
in the Via de Mascherone, called after it, near the Farnese Palace,
and the marble mask which belongs to a small fountain on the opposite
side of the river near the Palazzo Salviati. But the question arises,
Why should the Bocca della Verita, if such was its origin, have been
used for the superstitious purpose