Mania
An ancient and formidable Italian, probably Etruscan, divinity of the lower world, is called the mother of the Manes or Lares. (Varro, de Ling. Lat. ix. 61; Arnob. adv. Gent. iii. 41; Macrob. Sat. i. 7.)
The festival of the Compitalia was celebrated as a propitiation to Mania in common with the Lares, and, according to an ancient oracle that heads should be offered on behalf of heads, boys are said to have been sacrificed on behalf of the families to which they belonged. The consul Junius Brutus afterwards abolished the human sacrifices, and substituted garlic and the heads of poppies for them.
Images of Mania were hung up at the house doors, with a view to avert all dangers. (Macrob. l.c.)
As regards her being the mother of the Manes or Lares, the idea seems to have been, that the souls of the departed on their arrival in the lower world became her children, and either there dwelt with her or ascended into the upper world as beneficent spirits. (Müller, Die Etrusk. iii. 4.) In later times the plural Maniae occurs as the designation of terrible, ugly, and deformed spectres, with which nurses used to frighten children. (Paul. Diac. p. 128; Festus, p. 129, ed. Müller.)
From Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and MythologyFrom Fasti By Ovid. Book IV: April 12 Avoided by Ceres.
Dea Muta, or Mania, or Lara. The mother of the Lares (The public gods of the crossroads, the Lares Compitales, providing protection as the single family Lar provided household protection) and of the Manes (The ancestral dead, the 'good ones'). Lara was a nymph who talked so much that Jupiter cut out her tongue. She was then called Muta, or Tacita, the mute or silent one. Mania took part in the Compitalia and Feralia festivals, a kind of ogress who frightened little children. Maniae were grotesque figures representing the dead: woollen dolls were maniae, hung on doors in honour of the Lares.
