In ancient Etruscan and

Roman mythology Roman mythology is the body of myths of ancient Rome as represented in the literature and visual arts of the Romans, and is a form of Roman folklore. "Roman mythology" may also refer to the modern study of these representations, and to th ...

, Mania (), also spelled Manea, was a goddess of the dead, spirits and chaos: she was said to be the mother of

ghosts In folklore, a ghost is the soul or Spirit (supernatural entity), spirit of a dead Human, person or non-human animal that is believed by some people to be able to appear to the living. In ghostlore, descriptions of ghosts vary widely, from a ...

, the

undead The undead are beings in mythology, legend, or fiction that are deceased but behave as if they were alive. A common example of an undead being is a cadaver, corpse reanimated by supernatural forces, by the application of either the deceased's o ...

, and other spirits of the night, as well as the

Lares Lares ( , ; archaic , singular ) were Tutelary deity#Ancient Rome, guardian deities in ancient Roman religion. Their origin is uncertain; they may have been hero-ancestors, guardians of the hearth, fields, boundaries, or fruitfulness, or an ama ...

and the

Manes In ancient Roman religion, the ''Manes'' (, , ) or ''Di Manes'' are chthonic deities sometimes thought to represent souls of deceased loved ones. They were associated with the '' Lares'', '' Lemures'', '' Genii'', and '' Di Penates'' as deities ...

. She, along with Mantus (), ruled the

underworld The underworld, also known as the netherworld or hell, is the supernatural world of the dead in various religious traditions and myths, located below the world of the living. Chthonic is the technical adjective for things of the underworld. ...

. Her counterpart in

Greek mythology Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of ancient Greek folklore, today absorbed alongside Roman mythology into the broader designation of classical mythology. These stories conc ...

, also named

Mania Mania, also known as manic syndrome, is a Psychiatry, psychiatric Abnormality (behavior), behavioral syndrome defined as a state of Abnormality (behavior), abnormally elevated arousal, affect (psychology), affect, and energy level. During a mani ...

(or Maniae), was the goddess of insanity and madness.

Etymology

Her name links her to the Manes, Mana Genita, and Manius.Roger D. Woodard, ''Indo-European Sacred Space: Vedic and Roman Cult'' (University of Illinois Press, 2006), pp. 116–117. Both the Greek and Latin ''Mania'' derive from

PIE A pie is a baked dish which is usually made of a pastry dough casing that contains a filling of various sweet or savoury ingredients. Sweet pies may be filled with fruit (as in an apple pie), nuts ( pecan pie), fruit preserves ( jam tart ...

(Proto-Indo-European) *''men-'', "to think."

Cognate In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymological ancestor in a common parent language. Because language change can have radical effects on both the s ...

s include

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

, and

Avestan Avestan ( ) is the liturgical language of Zoroastrianism. It belongs to the Iranian languages, Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family and was First language, originally spoken during the Avestan period, Old ...

References

Death goddesses Etruscan goddesses Roman goddesses Undead Underworld goddesses {{deity-stub

Etymology

See also

References