ETRUSCAN DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
ALTHOUGH the living form and written annals of Etruria perished
thousands of years ago, and although but slight references to her
affairs have come down to us in the documents of contemporary
nations, yet, through a comparatively recent acquisition of facts,
we have quite a distinct and satisfactory knowledge of her
condition and experience when her power was palmiest. We follow
the ancient Etruscans from the cradle to the tomb, perceiving
their various national costumes, peculiar physiognomies, names and
relationships, houses, furniture, ranks, avocations, games, dying
scenes, burial processions, and funeral festivals. And, further
than this, we follow their souls into the world to come, behold
them in the hands of good or evil spirits, brought to judgment and
then awarded their deserts of bliss or woe. This knowledge has
been derived from their sepulchres, which still resist the
corroding hand of Time when nearly every thing else Etruscan has
mingled with the ground.1 They hewed their tombs in the living
rock of cliffs and hills, or reared them of massive masonry. They
painted or carved the walls with descriptive and symbolic scenes,
and crowded their interiors with sarcophagi, cinerary urns, vases,
goblets, mirrors, and a thousand other articles covered with
paintings and sculptures rich in information of their authors.
From a study of these things, lately disinterred in immense
quantities, has been constructed, for the most part, our present
acquaintance with this ancient people. Strange that, when the
whole scene of life has passed away, a sepulchral world should
survive and open itself to reveal the past and instruct the
future! We seem to see, rising from her tombs, and moving solemnly
among the mounds where all she knew or cared for has for so many
ages been inurned, the ghost of a mighty people. With dejected air
she leans on a ruined temple and muses; and her shadowy tears fall
silently over what was and is not.
The Etruscans were accustomed to bury their deceased outside their
walls; and sometimes the city of the living was thus surrounded by
a far reaching city of the dead. At this day the decaying fronts
of the houses of the departed, for miles upon miles along the
road, admonish the living traveller. These stone hewn sepulchres
crowd nearly every hill and glen. Whole acres of them are also
found upon the plains, covered by several feet of earth, where
every spring the plough passes over them, and every autumn the
harvest waves; but the dust beneath reposes well, and knows
nothing of this.
"Time buries graves. How strange! a buried grave! Death cannot
from more death its own dead empire save."
The houses of the dead were built in imitation of the houses of
the living, only on a smaller scale; and the interior arrangements
were so closely copied that it is said the resemblance held in all
but the light of day and the sound and motion of life. The images
1 Mrs. Gray, Sepulchres of Etruria.
painted or etched on the urns and sarcophagi that fill the
sepulchres were portraits of the deceased, accurate likenesses,
varying with age, sex, features, and expression. These personal
portraits were taken and laid up here, doubtless, to preserve
their remembrance when the original had crumbled to ashes. What a
touching voice is this from antiquity, telling us that our poor,
fond human nature was ever the same! The heart longed to be kept
still in remembrance when the mortal frame was gone. But how vain
the wish beyond the vanishing circle of hearts that returned its
love! For, as we wander through those sepulchres now, thousands of
faces thus preserved look down upon us with a mute plea, when
every vestige of their names and characters is forever lost, and
their very dust scattered long ago.
Along the sides of the burial chamber were ranged massive stone
shelves, or sometimes benches, or tables, upon which the dead were
laid in a reclining posture, to sleep their long sleep. It often
happens that on these rocky biers lie the helmet, breastplate,
greaves, signet ring, and weapons, or, if it be a female, the
necklace, ear rings, bracelet, and other ornaments, each in its
relative place, when the body they once encased or adorned has not
left a single fragment behind. An antiquary once, digging for
discoveries, chanced to break through the ceiling of a tomb. He
looked in; and there, to quote his own words, "I beheld a warrior
stretched on a couch of rock, and in a few minutes I saw him
vanish under my eyes; for, as the air entered the cemetery, the
armor, thoroughly oxydized, crumbled away into most minute
particles, and in a short time scarcely a trace of what I had seen
was left on the couch. It is impossible to express the effect this
sight produced upon me."
An important element in the religion of Etruria was the doctrine
of Genii, a system of household deities who watched over the
fortunes of individuals and families, and who are continually
shown on the engravings in the sepulchres as guiding, or actively
interested in, all the incidents that happen to those under their
care. It was supposed that every person had two genii allotted to
him, one inciting him to good deeds, the other to bad, and both
accompanying him after death to the judgment to give in their
testimony and turn the scales of his fate. This belief, sincerely
held, would obviously wield a powerful influence over their
feelings in the conduct of life.
The doctrine concerning the gods that prevailed in this ancient
nation is learned partly from the classic authors, partly from
sepulchral monumental remains. It was somewhat allied to that of
Egypt, but much more to that of Rome, who indeed derived a
considerable portion of her mythology from this source. As in
other pagan countries, a multitude of deities were worshipped
here, each having his peculiar office, form of representation, and
cycle of traditions. It would be useless to specify all.2 The
goddess of Fate was pictured with wings, showing her swiftness,
and with a hammer and nail, to typify that her decrees were
unalterably fixed. The name of the supreme god was Tinia. He was
the central power of the world of divinities, and was always
represented, like Jupiter 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 scarcely be looked
upon without tears, others of the most appalling nature, showing
perfect abandonment to fright, screams, sobbing, and despair. The
last hour is described under all circumstances, coming to all
sorts of persons, prince, priest, peasant, man, mother, and child.
Patriarchs are dying surrounded by groups in every posture of
grief; friends are waving a mournful farewell to their weeping
lovers; wives are torn from the embrace of their husbands; some
seem resigned and willingly going, others reluctant and driven in
terror.
The next series of engravings contain descriptions and emblems of
the departure of the soul from this world, and of its passage into
the next. There are various symbols of this mysterious transition:
one is a snake with a boy riding upon its back, its amphibious
nature plainly typifying the twofold existence allotted to man.
The soul is also often shown muffled in a veil and travelling
garb, seated upon a horse, and followed by a slave carrying a
large sack of provisions, an emblem of the long and dreary journey
about to be taken. Horses are depicted harnessed to cars in which
disembodied spirits are seated, a token of the swift ride
3 Saturnal. lib. i. cap. 7.
4 Dennis, Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, ch. xii.
of the dead to their doom. Sometimes the soul is gently invited,
or led, by a good spirit, sometimes beaten, or dragged away, by
the squalid and savage Charun, the horrible death king, or one of
his ministers; sometimes a good and an evil spirit are seen
contending for the soul; sometimes the soul is seen, on its knees,
beseeching the aid of its good genius and grasping at his
departing wing, as, with averted face, he is retiring; and
sometimes the good and the evil spirits are leading it away
together, to abide the sentence of the tribunal of Mantus. Whole
companies of souls are also set forth marching in procession,
under the guidance of a winged genius, to their subterranean
abode.
Finally, there is a class of representations depicting the
ultimate fate of souls after judgment has been passed. Some are
shown seated at banquet, in full enjoyment, according to their
ideas of bliss. Some are shown undergoing punishment, beaten with
hammers, stabbed and torn by black demons. There are no proofs
that the Etruscans believed in the translation of any soul to the
abode of the gods above the sky, no signs of any path rising to
the supernal heaven; but they clearly expected just discriminations
to be made in the under world. Into that realm many gates are shown
leading, some of them peaceful, inviting, surrounded by apparent
emblems of deliverance, rest, and blessedness; others yawning,
terrific, engirt by the heads of gnashing beasts and furies
threatening their victim.
"Shown is the progress of the guilty soul
From earth's worn threshold to the throne of doom;
Here the black genius to the dismal goal
Drags the wan spectre from the unsheltering tomb,
While from the side it never more may warn
The better angel, sorrowing, flees forlorn.
There (closed the eighth) seven yawning gates reveal
The sevenfold anguish that awaits the lost.
Closed the eighth gate, for there the happy dwell.
No glimpse of joy beyond makes horror less."
In these lines, from Bulwer's learned and ornate epic of King
Arthur, the dire severity of the Etruscan doctrine of a future
life is well indicated, with the local imagery of some parts of
it, and the impenetrable obscurity which enwraps the great sequel.