But the remains of the sacred ritual of the Etruscans that have
reached us are marked by a different spirit. Their prevailing
characteristics are a gloomy and withal tiresome mysticism, ringing
the changes on numbers, soothsaying, and that solemn enthroning of
pure absurdity which at all times finds its own circle of devotees.
We are far from knowing the Etruscan worship in such completeness
and purity as we know the Latin; and it is not improbable--indeed
it cannot well be doubted--that several of its features were only
imported into it by the minute subtlety of a later period, and that
the gloomy and fantastic principles, which were most alien to the
Latin worship, are those that have been especially handed down to
us by tradition. But enough still remains to show that the mysticism
and barbarism of this worship had their foundation in the essential
character of the Etruscan people.

With our very unsatisfactory knowledge we cannot grasp the intrinsic
contrast subsisting between the Etruscan conceptions of deity and
the Italian; but it is clear that the most prominent among the
Etruscan gods were the malignant and the mischievous; as indeed
their worship was cruel, and included in particular the sacrifice
of their captives; thus at Caere they slaughtered the Phocaean, and
at Traquinii the Roman, prisoners. Instead of a tranquil world of
departed "good spirits" ruling peacefully in the realms beneath,
such as the Latins had conceived, the Etruscan religion presented
a veritable hell, in which the poor souls were doomed to be tortured
by mallets and serpents, and to which they were conveyed by the
conductor of the dead, a savage semi-brutal figure of an old man
with wings and a large hammer--a figure which afterwards served in
the gladiatorial games at Rome as a model for the costume of the
man who removed the corpses of the slain from the arena. So fixed
was the association of torture with this condition of the shades,
that there was even provided a redemption from it, which after certain
mysterious offerings transferred the poor soul to the society of
the gods above. It is remarkable that, in order to people their
lower world, the Etruscans early borrowed from the Greeks their
gloomiest notions, such as the doctrine of Acheron and Charon,
which play an important part in the Etruscan discipline.

But the Etruscan occupied himself above all in the interpretation
of signs and portents. The Romans heard the