This death demon is painted isolated, unconnected with the subjects of the rest of the paintings, and could indeed be explained away as a decorative figure, created, to be sure, by an imagination inflamed with terror. But in the third room of the same tomb, the pictures of which belong to the transition from the fifth to the fourth century, a similar demon of the nether world is already represented in action (fig. 36). The inscription gives his name, Tuchulcha; he has asses’ ears, two snakes rear themselves like horns above his brow, and with a huge snake he threatens a long-haired youth who sits sorrowful on the rock, with a himation round his loins; his name, according to the inscription, is ‘These’. He is the Greek Theseus, and the young man opposite to him is Pirithous; the motive is their sufferings in the Underworld, where they had ventured down in order to abduct Persephone. But there broods over the scene a sinister spirit which is not Greek. Thus we see behind the rock on which Theseus is seated a loathsome snake with winged head, and the remains of a blue demon with staff and chiton, a kinsman of Tuchulcha. The appearance, to the left of this weird phantasmagoria, of the peaceful sideboard with its fine metal bowls[100] and with a handsome naked slave as cup-bearer in front of it, has undeniably a somewhat odd effect. This is a reminiscence of the old joyous symposium scenes, and a remarkable witness to the lack of clearness in the Etruscan mind and to the fragmentary character of Etruscan pictorial art. A similar mixture of everyday life and myth would be inconceivable in Egyptian or in Greek art. Similarly, in the Tomba Golini, we see the side-table and the slave in immediate continuation of the picture representing the two enthroned rulers of the Underworld—Hades and Persephone (inscriptions: Eita and Phersipnai). Hades has a wolf-helmet and a snake-sceptre and is caressing Persephone, who has a bird-crowned sceptre in her left hand, and rests her right hand on the knee of Hades (see above fig. 32). Her dress, her face, and her yellow hair under the golden diadem are all splendidly painted. [Illustration: FIG. 36. PICTURE IN THE TOMBA DELL’ ORCO AT CORNETO] [Illustration: FIG. 37. HADES, PERSEPHONE AND GERYON IN THE TOMBA DELL’ ORCO]