The Etruscans have long been considered one of the most enigmatic peoples of the ancient world. Still today shrouded in mystery, their civilization first came to be known from their frescoed tombs spread across the lands north and west of Rome with their suggestive phallic symbols. History, as usual brutal and reductive, tells the story of the Etruscan civilization in a few words: they appeared, flourished for nine centuries, their kings ruled Rome for hundreds of years, and then they declined and vanished. Where they came from and where they went still mystifies scholars. The well-preserved frescoes in Etruscan tombs depict magical religious lives of banquets, dancing, music and sex, filled with demons and deities and a morbid preoccupation with the hereafter. Their sacred books dealing with arcane rituals and accumulated knowledge constituted the so-called Etruscan Discipline, a unity of theory and practice about the interpretation of signs. Their deities were Jupiter, Juno, Mars, Mercury, Venus, Saturn, Minerva, and their terrible God, Charun-Charon.