The Destiny of the Soul: A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life

o her affairs have come down to us in the documents of contemporary nations, yet, through a comparatively recent acquisition

ding 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

s 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

buried grave! Death cannot from mo

maller scale; and the interior arrangements were so closely copied that it is said the

, Sepulchre

hen 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 vanis

e, 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

lchres 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 b

ries, 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 t

sker, buch iii. ka

s 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 th

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 hou

e 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 follow

l. lib. i

and Cemeteries of

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

bbed 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 t

progress of

n threshold to t

k genius to t

ectre from the u

side it never

el, sorrowing,

eighth) seven ya

anguish that a

h gate, for ther

joy beyond mak

ty of the Etruscan doctrine of a future life is well indicated, with the local imager