Their mythology was composed of Assyrian, Persian, and Egyptian notions, strongly tinged with gloomy superstitions. Petrifactions of the most astonishing forms abound in the plains where they settled. Near Cortona the bones of a whale have been found. The Arno valley resembles a vast elephant burial-place; and the bones of the mastodon, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus, are scattered broadcast all over old Etruria, and are still used to fence in the fields. Besides the bones of these huge monsters, those of hyænas, panthers, bears, and wolves are found in such abundance, that the peasants to this very day believe they grew like mushrooms over night, having been sown by invisible spirits to give the poor the trouble of picking them up. The aspect of nature and the remains of an antediluvian world gave the Etruskan priesthood an irresistible sway over the minds of the people. Whilst in Greece, under the influence of a happy aspect of nature, the Indian, Assyrian, and Egyptian embodiments of the forces of nature lost their fearful forms; in Etruria they gained even more gloomy and melancholy figures in the presence of everlasting thunder and lightning, and volcanic disturbances. The Etruskans had two sets of gods. _a._ The veiled gods, with ‘_Asar_’ at their head, representing the cosmognical forces of nature; especially fire, water, earth, and ether, like the divinities of India and Egypt. _b._ Twelve lower divinities presiding over the order of existing and visible things. Their gods have a great resemblance to those of the Scandinavians, uniting in one distinct chain the Aryans on the Ganges, those on the Nile, and those round the Delphic oracle, with the Hyperboreans of the farthest north. They all believed in an ‘inferno,’ only with the Greeks this was an Elysium, a land of shadows, a land of happiness. The divinities of the Etruskans were phantoms of horror. The whole of their creed was devoid of a comforting union between gods and men. This despairing faith impressed the people with a ferocious character. Their art under such impressions never could reach the beautiful. A tribe of whom it has been said that their priests attacked the Romans with hissing serpents and burning torches--a tribe that crouched in fear before invisible gods, and hated every other tribe--could never take an interest in the gentler emotions produced by poetry or art. They remembered the Greek expedition against Thebes, and adorned their _burial_ urns with scenes from the battle at Marathon; they commemorated the heroic deed of a ploughman, who, in the midst of the battle, took up his plough and drove the Persians before him like a flock of frightened sheep, whilst the Greeks remembered the deed in mentioning _Echetlos_ in connection with Marathon, but possessed no record of the fact on any of their monuments. The Etruscans, however, delighted in such scenes. At their funerals they had no dances, but sanguinary fights.