the cuneiform characters of Assyria, and the runic inscriptions of Northern Europe, the Etruscan language presents almost the only philological problem that refuses to be solved.  Thus when the air and the light of modern investigation penetrated into the mystery which surrounded this strange people, all that was most important had vanished; and only the few ornaments of the tomb remained to tell us of a lost world of art, literature, and human life which had perished not by internal exhaustion, but had fallen before the arms of Rome in the full maturity of its civilisation.

CHAPTER VIII

HOLED STONES AND MARTYR WEIGHTS

In the porch of the interesting old church of Sta.  Maria in Cosmedin near the Tiber is preserved a huge circular stone like a millstone.  It is composed of white marble, upwards of five feet in diameter, and is finished after the model of the dramatic mask used in the ancient theatres.  In the centre is a round hole perforating the mass right through, forming the mouth of the mask.  It is called the Bocca della Verita, and has given its name to the irregular piazza in which the church is situated.  It is so called from the use to which it has been put from time immemorial, as an ordeal for testing the guilt or innocence of an accused person.  If the suspected individual on making an affirmation thrust his hand through the hole and was able to draw it back again, he was pronounced innocent; but if, on the contrary, the hand remained fixed in the marble jaws, the person was declared to have sworn falsely and was pronounced guilty.  The marble mouth was supposed by the superstitious to contract or expand itself according to the moral character of the arraigned person.  No reason has been given why this singular marble mask should have been placed in this church, nor is anything known of its previous history.  Some have conjectured that it served as an impluvium or mouth of a drain in the centre of a court to let the water run off; and others regard it as having been an ornament for a fountain, like the colossal mask of marble out of the mouth of which a jet of water falls into a fountain in the Via de Mascherone, called after it, near the Farnese Palace, and the marble mask which belongs to a small fountain on the opposite side of the river near the Palazzo Salviati.  But the question arises, Why should the Bocca della Verita, if such was its origin, have been used for the superstitious purpose connected with it?  Our answer to this question must lead us back to the Temple of Ceres and Proserpine which originally stood on the site of the church of Sta.  Maria in Cosmedin, and of the materials of which the Christian edifice was largely built.