Before they became acquainted with Greece, the Romans looked to the Etruscans as their instructors in religious things. The disposition of the Etruscans was melancholy and serious; their form of government a rigid aristocracy, administered by an hereditary race or caste of priestly nobility. Their system was founded on some peculiar views of the world and its periods, and on the art of learning the will of the supernal powers by the thunder, the lightning, and other aerial phenomena. The rules and principles of this science were contained in books ascribed to a subterranean dæmon named Tages, who, the Tuscan legend said, had risen up, a babe in form, an aged man in wisdom, from under the soil before the plow of a peasant of Tarquinii as he was at his work, and who instructed the people in divination. According to the doctrine of the Etruscans there were two orders of gods, the one superior, _veiled_ and nameless, with whom the supreme god took counsel when about to announce by lightning any change in the present order of things. The other consisted of twelve gods, six male and as many females, his ordinary council. These were called by the common name of _Consentes_ or _Complices_ (the Latin of the Etruscan word), according to Varro, because they are born and die together. The general Etruscan word for a god was Æsar. The supreme god of the Tuscans, answering to the Zeus of the Greeks, the Jupiter of the Romans, was named Tina. A goddess named Kupra was called by the Romans Juno; and another, named Menerfa or Menrfa, was the original of the Minerva of Rome. These three deities had always contiguous temples on the citadel of every Etruscan city. Hence the united temples of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, which crowned the capitol at Rome. A goddess named Nortia, answering to the Roman Fortuna, was worshiped at the Tuscan cities of Sutri and Volsinii. Vertumnus also was one of the principal deities of Etruria. The Tuscan god of the under-world, or rather the ruler of the dead, it is said, was named Mantus, and there was a goddess called Mama of a similar nature. The Lares, or household gods, which form so conspicuous a feature of the Roman religion, it is probable, belonged originally to the Etruscan system of worship. THE SABELLIAN RELIGION. The rigid virtues of a portion of the Sabellian race, particularly the Sabines, were always the theme of praise at Rome. Grazing and agriculture were the chief employments of these hardy tribes, and their religion was intimately connected with these arts; and consequently, we may suppose, bore much resemblance to that of the Latins. It has always been asserted that a great portion of the Roman religion was of Sabine origin.