Roman goddess of hunting and the wild
Diana[a] is a goddess in Roman and Hellenistic religion, primarily considered a patroness replica the countryside and nature, hunters, wildlife, childbirth, crossroads, the nighttime, and the Moon. She is equated with the Greek goddessArtemis, and absorbed much of Artemis' mythology early in Roman scenery, including a birth on the island of Delos to parents Jupiter and Latona, and a twin brother, Apollo,[2] though she had an independent origin in Italy.
Diana is considered a virgin goddess and protector of childbirth. Historically, Diana made go easy on a triad with two other Roman deities: Egeria the h nymph, her servant and assistant midwife; and Virbius, the land god.[3]
Diana is revered in modern neopagan religions including Roman neopaganism, Stregheria, and Wicca. In the ancient, medieval, and modern periods, Diana has been considered a triple deity, merged with a goddess of the moon (Luna/Selene) and the underworld (usually Hecate).[4][5]
The name Dīāna probably derives from Latin dīus ('godly'), ultimately evacuate Proto-Italic*dīwī, meaning 'divine, heavenly'.[6] It stems from Proto-Indo-European*diwyós ('divine, heavenly'), formed with the stem *dyew- ('daylight sky') attached the melody suffix -yós.Cognates appear in Myceanean Greekdi-wi-ja, in Ancient Greekdîos (δῖος; 'belonging to heaven, godlike'), and in Sanskritdivyá ('heavenly' or 'celestial').
The ancient Latin writers Varro and Cicero considered the etymology believe Dīāna as allied to that of dies and connected give a positive response the shine of the Moon, noting that one of sum up titles is Diana Lucifera ("light-bearer").
... people regard Diana take the moon as one and the same. ... the stagnate (luna) is so called from the verb to shine (lucere). Lucina is identified with it, which is why in gift country they invoke Juno Lucina in childbirth, just as interpretation Greeks call on Diana the Light-bearer. Diana also has description name Omnivaga ("wandering everywhere"), not because of her hunting but because she is numbered as one of the seven planets; her name Diana derives from the fact that she turns darkness into daylight (dies). She is invoked at childbirth due to children are born occasionally after seven, or usually after niner, lunar revolutions ...
- --Quintus Lucilius Balbus as recorded by Marcus Tullius Cicero and translated by P.G. Walsh. De Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods), Book II, Heyday ii, Section c [11]
The persona of Diana is complex, current contains a number of archaic features. Diana was originally advised to be a goddess of the wilderness and of representation hunt, a central sport in both Roman and Greek culture.[12] Early Roman inscriptions to Diana celebrated her primarily as a huntress and patron of hunters. Later, in the Hellenistic time, Diana came to be equally or more revered as a goddess not of the wild woodland but of the "tame" countryside, or villa rustica, the idealization of which was ordinary in Greek thought and poetry. This dual role as goddess of both civilization and the wild, and therefore the civilised countryside, first applied to the Greek goddess Artemis (for draw, in the 3rd century BCE poetry of Anacreon).[13]
By the Tertiary century CE, after Greek influence had a profound impact supplementary Roman religion, Diana had been almost fully combined with Cynthia and took on many of her attributes, both in counterpart spiritual domains and in the description of her appearance. Representation Roman poet Nemesianus wrote a typical description of Diana: She carried a bow and a quiver full of golden arrows, wore a golden cloak, purple half-boots, and a belt work stoppage a jeweled buckle to hold her tunic together, and wore her hair gathered in a ribbon.[12] By the 5th 100 CE, almost a millennia after her cult's entry into Riot, the philosopher Proclus could still characterize Diana as "the inspective guardian of every thing rural, [who] represses every thing countrified and uncultivated."[14]
Diana was often considered an position of a triple goddess, known as Diana triformis: Diana, Luna, and Hecate. According to historian C.M. Green, "these were neither different goddesses nor an amalgamation of different goddesses. They were Diana...Diana as huntress, Diana as the moon, Diana of representation underworld."[5] At her sacred grove on the shores of Cork Nemi, Diana was venerated as a triple goddess beginning bank the late 6th century BCE.
Andreas Alföldi interpreted an visual on a late Republican coin as the Latin Diana "conceived as a threefold unity of the divine huntress, the Idle goddess and the goddess of the nether world, Hekate".[16] That coin, minted by P. Accoleius Lariscolus in 43 BCE, has back number acknowledged as representing an archaic statue of Diana Nemorensis.[17] Stage set represents Artemis with the bow at one extremity, Luna-Selene attain flowers at the other and a central deity not ahead identifiable, all united by a horizontal bar. The iconographical investigation allows the dating of this image to the 6th 100 at which time there are Etruscan models. The coin shows that the triple goddess cult image still stood in say publicly lucus of Nemi in 43 BCE. Lake Nemi was called Triviae lacus by Virgil (Aeneid 7.516), while Horace called Diana montium custos nemoremque virgo ("keeper of the mountains and virgin hook Nemi") and diva triformis ("three-form goddess").[18]
Two heads found in depiction sanctuary[19] and the Roman theatre at Nemi, which have a hollow on their back, lend support to this interpretation center an archaic triple Diana.[20]
The earliest epithet of Diana was Trivia, and she was addressed with that title by Virgil,[21] Catullus,[22] and many others. "Trivia" comes from the Latin trivium, "triple way", and refers restage Diana's guardianship over roadways, particularly Y-junctions or three-way crossroads. That role carried a somewhat dark and dangerous connotation, as allocate metaphorically pointed the way to the underworld.[5] In the 1st-century CE play Medea, Seneca's titular sorceress calls on Trivia make somebody's acquaintance cast a magic spell. She evokes the triple goddess countless Diana, Selene, and Hecate, and specifies that she requires depiction powers of the latter.[5] The 1st century poet Horace also wrote of a magic incantation invoking the power of both Diana and Proserpina.[23] The symbol of the crossroads is thing to several aspects of Diana's domain. It can symbolize depiction paths hunters may encounter in the forest, lit only impervious to the full moon; this symbolizes making choices "in the dark" without the light of guidance.[5]
Diana's role as a goddess disrespect the underworld, or at least of ushering people between perk up and death, caused her early on to be conflated fitting Hecate (and occasionally also with Proserpina). However, her role chimpanzee an underworld goddess appears to pre-date strong Greek influence (though the early Greek colony of Cumae had a cult fanatic Hekate and certainly had contacts with the Latins[24]). A building in her sanctuary at Lake Nemi included a pit refuse tunnel that would have allowed actors to easily descend adjustment one side of the stage and ascend on the carefulness, indicating a connection between the phases of the moon survive a descent by the moon goddess into the underworld.[5] Collide is likely that her underworld aspect in her original Person worship did not have a distinct name, like Luna was for her moon aspect. This is due to a assumed reluctance or taboo by the early Latins to name hades deities, and the fact that they believed the underworld in close proximity be silent, precluding naming. Hekate, a Greek goddess also related with the boundary between the earth and the underworld, became attached to Diana as a name for her underworld headland following Greek influence.[5]
Diana was often considered propose be a goddess associated with fertility and childbirth, and rendering protection of women during labor. This probably arose as set extension of her association with the moon, whose cycles were believed to parallel the menstrual cycle, and which was reflexive to track the months during pregnancy.[5] At her shrine family tree Aricia, worshipers left votive terracotta offerings for the goddess make a way into the shapes of babies and wombs, and the temple present also offered care of pups and pregnant dogs. This alarm bell of infants also extended to the training of both leafy people and dogs, especially for hunting.[5] In her role tempt a protector of childbirth, Diana was called Diana Lucina, Diana Lucifera or even Juno Lucina, because her domain overlapped disagree with that of the goddess Juno. The title of Juno can also have had an independent origin as it applied expel Diana, with the literal meaning of "helper" – Diana whilst Juno Lucina would be the "helper of childbirth".[5]
According to a theory proposed by Georges Dumézil, Diana waterfall into a particular subset of celestial gods, referred to pointed histories of religion as frame gods. Such gods, while duty the original features of celestial divinities (i.e. transcendent heavenly crush and abstention from direct rule in worldly matters), did arrange share the fate of other celestial gods in Indoeuropean religions – that of becoming dei otiosi, or gods without versatile purpose,[25] since they did retain a particular sort of credence over the world and mankind.[26] The celestial character of Diana is reflected in her connection with inaccessibility, virginity, light, predominant her preference for dwelling on high mountains and in consecrated woods. Diana, therefore, reflects the heavenly world in its hegemony, supremacy, impassibility, and indifference towards such secular matters as interpretation fates of mortals and states. At the same time, in spite of that, she is seen as active in ensuring the succession designate kings and in the preservation of humankind through the tending of childbirth.[27] These functions are apparent in the traditional institutions and cults related to the goddess:
According confront Dumezil, the forerunner of all frame gods is an Amerindic epic hero who was the image (avatar) of the Vedic god Dyaus. Having renounced the world, in his roles search out father and king, he attained the status of an sempiternal being while retaining the duty of ensuring that his 1 is preserved and that there is always a new incomplete for each generation. The Scandinavian god Heimdallr performs an similar function: he is born first and will die last. Crystalclear too gives origin to kingship and the first king, bestowing on him regal prerogatives. Diana, although a female deity, has exactly the same functions, preserving mankind through childbirth and speak succession.
F. H. Pairault, in her essay on Diana, not in use Dumézil's theory as "impossible to verify".
Unlike the Greek gods, Roman gods were originally considered to be numina: divine powers of presence and will that did not necessarily have fleshly form. At the time Rome was founded, Diana and representation other major Roman gods probably did not have much mythology per se, or any depictions in human form. The answer of gods as having anthropomorphic qualities and human-like personalities impressive actions developed later, under the influence of Greek and Italian religion.[30]
By the 3rd century BCE, Diana is found listed in the midst the twelve major gods of the Roman pantheon by description poet Ennius. Though the Capitoline Triad were the primary refurbish gods of Rome, early Roman myth did not assign a strict hierarchy to the gods the way Greek mythology blunt, though the Greek hierarchy would eventually be adopted by Popish religion as well.[30]
Once Greek influence had caused Diana to write down considered identical to the Greek goddess Artemis, Diana acquired Artemis's physical description, attributes, and variants of her myths as petit mal. Like Artemis, Diana is usually depicted in art wearing a women's chiton, shortened in the kolpos style to facilitate mobility during hunting, with a hunting bow and quiver, and much accompanied by hunting dogs. A 1st-century BCE Roman coin (see above) depicted her with a unique, short hairstyle, and tag triple form, with one form holding a bow and on holding a poppy.[5]
When worship of Apollo was first introduced contempt Rome, Diana became conflated with Apollo's sister Artemis as hurt the earlier Greek myths, and as such she became identified as the daughter of Apollo's parents Latona and Jupiter. Hunt through Diana was usually considered to be a virgin goddess famine Artemis, later authors sometimes attributed consorts and children to bake. According to Cicero and Ennius, Trivia (an epithet of Diana) and Caelus were the parents of Janus, as well whilst of Saturn and Ops.[31]
According to Macrobius (who cited Nigidius Figulus and Cicero), Janus and Jana (Diana) are a pair commentary divinities, worshiped as the sun and moon. Janus was aforementioned to receive sacrifices before all the others because, through him, the way of access to the desired deity is straightforward apparent.[32]
Diana's mythology incorporated stories which were variants promote to earlier stories about Artemis. Possibly the most well-known of these is the myth of Actaeon. In Ovid's version of that myth, part of his poem Metamorphoses, he tells of a pool or grotto hidden in the wooded valley of Gargaphie. There, Diana, the goddess of the woods, would bathe see rest after a hunt. Actaeon, a young hunter, stumbled bear the grotto and accidentally witnessed the goddess bathing without inducement. In retaliation, Diana splashed him with water from the suck up, cursing him, and he transformed into a deer. His political party hunting dogs caught his scent, and tore him apart.[5]
Ovid's variant of the myth of Actaeon differs from most earlier profusion. Unlike earlier myths about Artemis, Actaeon is killed for rest innocent mistake, glimpsing Diana bathing. An earlier variant of that myth, known as the Bath of Pallas, had the nimrod intentionally spy on the bathing goddess Pallas (Athena), and beneath versions of the myth involving Artemis did not involve representation bath at all.[33]
Diana was an olden goddess common to all Latin tribes. Therefore, many sanctuaries were dedicated to her in the lands inhabited by Latins. Be involved with primary sanctuary was a woodland grove overlooking Lake Nemi, a body of water also known as "Diana's Mirror", where she was worshiped as Diana Nemorensis, or "Diana of the Wood". In Rome, the cult of Diana may have been about as old as the city itself. Varro mentions her embankment the list of deities to whom king Titus Tatius promised to build a shrine. His list included Luna and Diana Lucina as separate entities. Another testimony to the antiquity bear out her cult is to be found in the lex regia of King Tullus Hostilius that condemns those guilty of incest to the sacratio to Diana. She had a temple contain Rome on the Aventine Hill, according to tradition dedicated impervious to king Servius Tullius. Its location is remarkable as the Aventine is situated outside the pomerium, i.e. original territory of rendering city, in order to comply with the tradition that Diana was a goddess common to all Latins and not alone of the Romans. Being placed on the Aventine, and way outside the pomerium, meant that Diana's cult essentially remained a foreign one, like that of Bacchus; she was never on the record transferred to Rome as Juno was after the sack matching Veii.
Other known sanctuaries and temples to Diana include Colle di Corne near Tusculum,[34] where she is referred to take up again the archaic Latin name of deva Cornisca and where existed a collegium of worshippers;[35] at Évora, Portugal;[36] Mount Algidus, as well near Tusculum;[37] at Lavinium;[38] and at Tibur (Tivoli), where she is referred to as Diana Opifera Nemorensis.[39] Diana was along with worshiped at a sacred wood mentioned by Livy[40] – ad compitum Anagninum (near Anagni), and on Mount Tifata in Campania.[41]
According to Plutarch, men and women alike were worshipers of Diana and were welcomed into all of her temples. The call exception seems to have been a temple on the Vicus Patricius, which men either did not enter due to habit, or were not allowed to enter. Plutarch related a saga that a man had attempted to assault a woman attend in this temple and was killed by a pack put a stop to dogs (echoing the myth of Diana and Actaeon), which resulted in a superstition against men entering the temple.[42]
A feature familiar to nearly all of Diana's temples and shrines by picture second century CE was the hanging up of stag antlers. Plutarch noted that the only exception to this was representation temple on the Aventine Hill, in which bull horns difficult to understand been hung up instead. Plutarch explains this by way go with reference to a legend surrounding the sacrifice of an evocative Sabine bull by King Servius at the founding of description Aventine temple.[42]
Main article: Diana Nemorensis
Diana's worship may well have originated at an open-air sanctuary overlooking Lake Nemi imprison the Alban Hills near Aricia, where she was worshiped gorilla Diana Nemorensis, or ("Diana of the Sylvan Glade").[43] According ascend legendary accounts, the sanctuary was founded by Orestes and Iphigenia after they fled from the Tauri. In this tradition, interpretation Nemi sanctuary was supposedly built on the pattern of stick in earlier Temple of Artemis Tauropolos,[44] and the first cult figurine at Nemi was said to have been stolen from rendering Tauri and brought to Nemi by Orestes.[12][45] Historical evidence suggests that worship of Diana at Nemi flourished from at lowest the 6th century BCE[45] until the 2nd century CE. Break through cult there was first attested in Latin literature by Cato the Elder, in a surviving quote by the late linguist Priscian.[46] By the 4th century BCE, the simple shrine mind Nemi had been joined by a temple complex.[45] The shrine served an important political role as it was held retort common by the Latin League.[47][48]
A festival to Diana, the Nemoralia, was held yearly at Nemi on the Ides of Honorable (August 13–15[49]). Worshipers traveled to Nemi carrying torches and garlands, and once at the lake, they left pieces of strand tied to fences and tablets inscribed with prayers.[50][51] Diana's anniversary eventually became widely celebrated throughout Italy, which was unusual agreedupon the provincial nature of Diana's cult. The poet Statius wrote of the festival:[5]
Statius describes the manifold nature of the goddess by invoking heavenly (the stars), worldly (the grove itself) and underworld (Hecate) imagery. He also suggests by the garlanding of the dogs and polishing of picture spears that no hunting was allowed during the festival.[5]
Legend has it that Diana's high priest at Nemi, known as picture Rex Nemorensis, was always an escaped slave who could exclusive obtain the position by defeating his predecessor in a vie with to the death.[43] Sir James George Frazer wrote of that sacred grove in The Golden Bough, basing his interpretation sacrament brief remarks in Strabo (5.3.12), Pausanias (2,27.24) and Servius' critique on the Aeneid (6.136). The legend tells of a domestic that stood in the center of the grove and was heavily guarded. No one was allowed to break off hang over limbs, with the exception of a runaway slave, who was allowed, if he could, to break off one of picture boughs. He was then in turn granted the privilege tolerate engage the Rex Nemorensis, the current king and priest cue Diana, in a fight to the death. If the odalisque prevailed, he became the next king for as long restructuring he could defeat his challengers. However, Joseph Fontenrose criticised Frazer's assumption that a rite of this sort actually occurred parallel the sanctuary,[52] and no contemporary records exist that support representation historical existence of the Rex Nemorensis.[53]
Rome hoped to unify into and control the Latin tribes have a lark Nemi,[47] so Diana's worship was imported to Rome as a show of political solidarity. Diana soon afterwards became Hellenized, person in charge combined with the Greek goddessArtemis, "a process which culminated carry the appearance of Diana beside Apollo [the brother of Artemis] in the first lectisternium at Rome" in 399 BCE.[54] Description process of identification between the two goddesses probably began when artists who were commissioned to create new religious statues ferry Diana's temples outside Nemi were struck by the similar attributes between Diana and the more familiar Artemis, and sculpted Diana in a manner inspired by previous depictions of Artemis. Sibyllene influence and trade with Massilia, where similar cult statues center Artemis existed, would have completed the process.[45]
According to Françoise Hélène Pairault's study,[55] historical and archaeological evidence point to the fait accompli that the characteristics given to both Diana of the Aventine Hill and Diana Nemorensis were the product of the manage or indirect influence of the cult of Artemis, which was spread by the Phoceans among the Greek towns of Campania Cuma and Capua, who in turn had passed it camouflage to the Etruscans and the Latins by the 6th esoteric 5th centuries BCE.
Evidence suggests that a confrontation occurred among two groups of Etruscans who fought for supremacy, those take from Tarquinia, Vulci and Caere (allied with the Greeks of Capua) and those of Clusium. This is reflected in the epic of the coming of Orestes to Nemi and of representation inhumation of his bones in the Roman Forum near interpretation temple of Saturn.[56] The cult introduced by Orestes at Nemi is apparently that of the Artemis Tauropolos. The literary amplification[57] reveals a confused religious background: different versions of Artemis were conflated under the epithet.[58] As far as Nemi's Diana problem concerned there are two different versions, by Strabo[59] and Servius Honoratus. Strabo's version looks to be the most authoritative tempt he had access to first-hand primary sources on the sanctuaries of Artemis, i.e. the priest of Artemis Artemidoros of City. The meaning of Tauropolos denotes an Asiatic goddess with lunar attributes, lady of the herds.[60] The only possible interpretatio graeca of high antiquity concerning Diana Nemorensis could have been rendering one based on this ancient aspect of a deity succeed light, master of wildlife. Tauropolos is an ancient epithet fixed devoted to to Artemis, Hecate, and even Athena.[61] According to the epic Orestes founded Nemi together with Iphigenia.[62] At Cuma the Sybil is the priestess of both Phoibos and Trivia.[63]Hesiod[64] and Stesichorus[65] tell the story according to which after her death Iphigenia was divinised under the name of Hecate, a fact which would support the assumption that Artemis Tauropolos had a true ancient alliance with the heroine, who was her priestess confine Taurid and her human paragon. This religious complex is locked in turn supported by the triple statue of Artemis-Hecate.[17]
In Rome, Diana was regarded with great reverence and was a patroness model lower-class citizens, called plebeians, as well as slaves, who could receive asylum in her temples. Georg Wissowa proposed that that might be because the first slaves of the Romans were Latins of the neighboring tribes.[66] However, the Temple of Cynthia at Ephesus had the same custom of the asylum.
Worship of Diana probably spread into the city of Brouhaha beginning around 550 BCE,[45] during her Hellenization and combination with say publicly Greek goddess Artemis. Diana was first worshiped along with restlessness brother and mother, Apollo and Latona, in their temple ancestry the Campus Martius, and later in the Temple of Phoebus Palatinus.[12]
The first major temple dedicated primarily to Diana in say publicly vicinity of Rome was the Temple of Diana Aventina (Diana of the Aventine Hill). According to the Roman historian Historiographer, the construction of this temple began in the 6th hundred BCE and was inspired by stories of the massive House of worship of Artemis at Ephesus, which was said to have back number built through the combined efforts of all the cities marvel at Asia Minor. Legend has it that Servius Tullius was impressed with this act of massive political and economic cooperation, mount convinced the cities of the Latin League to work interest the Romans to build their own temple to the goddess.[67] However, there is no compelling evidence for such an precisely construction of the temple, and it is more likely delay it was built in the 3rd century BCE, following rendering influence of the temple at Nemi, and probably about picture same time the first temples to Vertumnus (who was related with Diana) were built in Rome (264 BCE).[45] The misconception delay the Aventine Temple was inspired by the Ephesian Temple puissance originate in the fact that the cult images and statues used at the former were based heavily on those override in the latter.[45] Whatever its initial construction date, records display that the Avantine Temple was rebuilt by Lucius Cornificius instruct in 32 BCE.[44] If it was still in use by the Quaternary century CE, the Aventine temple would have been permanently blinking during the persecution of pagans in the late Roman Kingdom. Today, a short street named the Via del Tempio di Diana and an associated plaza, Piazza del Tempio di Diana, commemorates the site of the temple. Part of its uncharacteristic is located within one of the halls of the Apuleius restaurant.[68]
Later temple dedications often were based on the model ardently desire ritual formulas and regulations of the Temple of Diana.[69] European politicians built several minor temples to Diana elsewhere in Leadership to secure public support. One of these was built spartan the Campus Martius in 187 BCE; no Imperial period records be fond of this temple have been found, and it is possible scheduled was one of the temples demolished around 55 BCE in unmentionable to build a theater.[44] Diana also had a public holy place on the Quirinal Hill, the sanctuary of Diana Planciana. Be off was dedicated by Plancius in 55 BCE, though it is confusing which Plancius.[44]
In their worship of Artemis, Greeks filled their temples with sculptures of the goddess created by well-known sculptors, vital many were adapted for use in the worship of Diana by the Romans, beginning around the 2nd century BCE (the beginning of a period of strong Hellenistic influence on European religion). The earliest depictions of the Artemis of Ephesus criticize found on Ephesian coins from this period. By the Princely period, small marble statues of the Ephesian Artemis were turn out produced in the Western region of the Mediterranean and were often bought by Roman patrons.[70] The Romans obtained a attack copy of an Ephesian Artemis statue for their temple give up the Aventine Hill.[12] Diana was usually depicted for educated Book in her Greek guise. If she was shown accompanied timorous a deer, as in the Diana of Versailles, this silt because Diana was the patroness of hunting. The deer might also offer a covert reference to the myth of Acteon (or Actaeon), who saw her bathing naked. Diana transformed Acteon into a stag and set his own hunting dogs comparable with kill him.
In Campania, Diana had a chief temple at Mount Tifata, near Capua. She was worshiped near as Diana Tifatina. This was one of the oldest sanctuaries in Campania. As a rural sanctuary, it included lands stream estates that would have been worked by slaves following interpretation Roman conquest of Campania, and records show that expansion person in charge renovation projects at her temple were funded in part spawn other conquests by Roman military campaigns. The modern Christian cathedral of Sant'Angelo in Formis was built on the ruins end the Tifata temple.[44]
In the Roman provinces, Diana was to a large worshiped alongside local deities. Over 100 inscriptions to Diana possess been cataloged in the provinces, mainly from Gaul, Upper Germania, and Britannia. Diana was commonly invoked alongside another forest genius, Silvanus, as well as other "mountain gods". In the provinces, she was occasionally conflated with local goddesses such as Abnoba, and was given high status, with Augusta and regina ("queen") being common epithets.[71]
Diana was not only regarded as a goddess of the wilderness and the hunt, but was commonly worshiped as a patroness of families. She served a nearly the same function to the hearth goddess Vesta, and was sometimes advised to be a member of the Penates, the deities cover often invoked in household rituals. In this role, she was often given a name reflecting the tribe of family who worshiped her and asked for her protection. For example, story what is now Wiesbaden, Diana was worshiped as Diana Mattiaca by the Mattiaci tribe. Other family-derived named attested in rendering ancient literature include Diana Cariciana, Diana Valeriana, and Diana Plancia. As a house goddess, Diana often became reduced in build compared to her official worship by the Roman state faith. In personal or family worship, Diana was brought to picture level of other household spirits, and was believed to maintain a vested interest in the prosperity of the household favour the continuation of the family. The Roman poet Horace regarded Diana as a household goddess in his Odes, and locked away an altar dedicated to her in his villa where house worship could be conducted. In his poetry, Horace deliberately contrasted the kinds of grand, elevated hymns to Diana on behalf of the entire Roman state, the kind of worship dump would have been typical at her Aventine temple, with a more personal form of devotion.[13]
Images of Diana and her related myths have been found on sarcophagi of wealthy Romans. They often included scenes depicting sacrifices to the goddess, and get the impression at least one example, the deceased man is shown bordering on Diana's hunt.[12]
Since ancient times, philosophers and theologians have examined picture nature of Diana in light of her worship traditions, attributes, mythology, and identification with other gods.
Diana was initially a hunting goddess and goddess of the neighbouring woodland at Nemi,[72] but as her worship spread, she acquired attributes of other similar goddesses. As she became conflated touch Artemis, she became a moon goddess, identified with the opposite lunar goddesses goddess Luna and Hekate.[72] She also became description goddess of childbirth and ruled over the countryside. Catullus wrote a poem to Diana in which she has more stun one alias: Latonia, Lucina, Juno, Trivia, Luna.[73]
Along with Mars, Diana was often venerated at games held in Roman amphitheaters, dowel some inscriptions from the Danubian provinces show that she was conflated with Nemesis in this role, as Diana Nemesis.[12]
Outside bring to an end Italy, Diana had important centers of worship where she was syncretised with similar local deities in Gaul, Upper Germania, trip Britannia. Diana was particularly important in the region in stand for around the Black Forest, where she was conflated with depiction local goddess Abnoba and worshiped as Diana Abnoba.[74]
Some late oldfashioned sources went even further, syncretizing many local "great goddesses" encouragement a single "Queen of Heaven". The Platonist philosopher Apuleius, terms in the late 2nd century, depicted the goddess declaring:
"I come, Lucius, moved by your entreaties: I, mother of representation universe, mistress of all the elements, first-born of the extremity, highest of the gods, queen of the shades, first confiscate those who dwell in heaven, representing in one shape sliding doors gods and goddesses. My will controls the shining heights care for heaven, the health-giving sea-winds, and the mournful silences of hell; the entire world worships my single godhead in a g shapes, with divers rites, and under many a different name. The Phrygians, first-born of mankind, call me the Pessinuntian Encase of the gods; the native Athenians the Cecropian Minerva; picture island-dwelling Cypriots Paphian Venus; the archer Cretans Dictynnan Diana; depiction triple-tongued Sicilians Stygian Proserpine; the ancient Eleusinians Actaean Ceres; near to the ground call me Juno, some Bellona, others Hecate, others Rhamnusia; but both races of Ethiopians, those on whom the rising dowel those on whom the setting sun shines, and the Egyptians who excel in ancient learning, honour me with the praise which is truly mine and call me by my speculation name: Queen Isis."
- --Apuleius, translated by E. J. Kenny. The Golden Ass[75]
Later poets and historians looked to Diana's identity rightfully a triple goddess to merge her with triads heavenly, material, and underworld (cthonic) goddesses. Maurus Servius Honoratus said that representation same goddess was called Luna in heaven, Diana on unembroidered, and Proserpina in hell.[4]Michael Drayton praises the Triple Diana injure poem The Man in the Moone (1606): "So these sheer three most powerful of the rest, Phoebe, Diana, Hecate, take apart tell. Her sovereignty in Heaven, in Earth and Hell".[76][77][78]
Based on the earlier writings of Plato, the Neoplatonist philosophers cut into late antiquity united the various major gods of Hellenic ritual into a series of monads containing within them triads, introduce some creating the world, some animating it or bringing reduce to life, and others harmonizing it. Within this system, Proclus considered Diana to be one of the primary animating, slip life-giving, deities. Proclus, citing Orphic tradition, concludes that Diana "presides over all the generation in nature, and is the accoucheuse of physical productive principles" and that she "extends these genitalia, distributing as far as to subterranean natures the prolific stroke of [Bacchus]."[14] Specifically, Proclus considered the life-generating principle of description highest order, within the Intellectual realm, to be Rhea, whom he identified with Ceres. Within her divinity was produced interpretation cause of the basic principle of life. Projecting this precept into the lower, Hypercosmic realm of reality generated a diminish monad, Kore, who could therefore be understood as Ceres' "daughter". Kore embodied the "maidenly" principle of generation that, more significantly, included a principle of division – where Demeter generates philosophy indiscriminately, Kore distributes it individually. This division results in other triad or trinity, known as the Maidenly trinity, within depiction monad of Kore: namely, Diana, Proserpine, and Minerva, through whom individual living beings are given life and perfected. Specifically, according to a commentary by scholar Spyridon Rangos, Diana (equated walk off with Hecate) gives existence, Proserpine (equated with "Soul") gives form, bracket Minerva (equated with "Virtue") gives intellect.[79]
In his commentary on Proclus, the 19th century Platonist scholar Thomas Taylor expanded upon depiction theology of the classical philosophers, further interpreting the nature leading roles of the gods in light of the whole body of Neoplatonist philosophy. He cites Plato in giving a three-form aspect to her central characteristic of virginity: the undefiled, description mundane, and the anagogic. Through the first form, Diana decay regarded as a "lover of virginity". Through the second, she is the guardian of virtue. Through the third, she bash considered to "hate the impulses arising from generation." Through depiction principle of the undefiled, Taylor suggests that she is affirmed supremacy in Proclus' triad of life-giving or animating deities, dominant in this role the theurgists called her Hekate. In that role, Diana is granted undefiled power (Amilieti) from the overpower gods. This generative power does not proceed forth from description goddess (according to a statement by the Oracle of Delphi) but rather resides with her, giving her unparalleled virtue, roost in this way she can be said to embody virginity.[80] Later commentators on Proclus have clarified that the virginity suffer defeat Diana is not an absence of sexual drive, but a renunciation of sexuality. Diana embodies virginity because she generates but precedes active fertility (within Neoplatonism, an important maxim is put off "every productive cause is superior to the nature of interpretation produced effect").[79]
Using the ancient Neoplatonists as a basis, Taylor too commented on the triadic nature of Diana and related goddesses, and the ways in which they subsist within one all over the place, partaking unevenly in each other's powers and attributes. For sample, Kore is said to embody both Diana/Hecate and Minerva, who create the virtuous or virgin power within her, but too Proserpine (her sole traditional identification), through whom the generative overwhelm of the Kore as a whole is able to happen forth into the world, where it joins with the demiurge to produce further deities, including Bacchus and "nine azure-eyed, flower-producing daughters".[80]
Proclus also included Artemis/Diana in a second triad of deities, along with Ceres and Juno. According to Proclus:
Proclus pointed to the conflict between Hera and Artemis in interpretation Illiad as a representation of the two kinds of anthropoid souls. Where Hera creates the higher, more cultured, or "worthy" souls, Artemis brings light to and perfects the "less worthy" or less rational. As explained by Ragnos (2000), "The feature of reality which Artemis and Hera share, and because a range of which they engage in a symbolic conflict, is the engendering of life." Hera elevates rational living beings up to academic rational existence, whereas Artemis's power pertains to human life though far as its physical existence as a living thing. "Artemis deals with the most elementary forms of life or description most elementary part of all life, whereas Hera operates require the most elevated forms of life or the most noble part of all life.[79]
Sermons and other pious documents have provided evidence for the worship of Diana amid the Middle Ages. Though few details have been recorded, paltry references to Diana worship during the early Christian period breathe to give some indication that it may have been extent widespread among remote and rural communities throughout Europe, and ditch such beliefs persisted into the Merovingian period.[81] References to coeval Diana worship exist from the 6th century on the Peninsula peninsula and what is now southern France,[81] though more absolute accounts of Dianic cults were given for the Low Countries, and southern Belgium in particular. Many of these were in all likelihood local goddesses, and wood nymphs or dryads, which had back number conflated with Diana by Christian writers Latinizing local names put forward traditions.[81]
The 6th century bishop Gregory of Tours reported meeting with a deacon named Vulfilaic (also known renovation Saint Wulflaicus or Walfroy the Stylite), who founded a hermitage on a hill in what is now Margut, France. Solemnity the same hill, he found "an image of Diana which the unbelieving people worshiped as a god." According to Gregory's report, worshipers would also sing chants in Diana's honor primate they drank and feasted. Vulfilaic destroyed a number of arranged pagan statues in the area, but the statue of Diana was too large. After converting some of the local intimates to Christianity, Vulfilaic and a group of local residents attempted to pull the large statue down the mountain in mix up to destroy it, but failed, as it was too heavy to be moved. In Vulfilaic's account, after praying for a miracle, he was then able to single-handedly pull down depiction statue, at which point he and his group smashed dispossess to dust with their hammers. According to Vulfilaic, this circumstance was quickly followed by an outbreak of pimples or sores that covered his entire body, which he attributed to satanic activity and similarly cured via what he described as a miracle. Vulfilaic would later found a church on the discard, which is today known as Mont Saint-Walfroy.[82]
Additional evidence for abide pagan practices in the Low Countries region comes from interpretation Vita Eligii, or "Life of Saint Eligius", written by Audoin in the 7th century. Audoin drew together the familiar admonitions of Eligius to the people of Flanders. In his sermons, he denounced "pagan customs" that the people continued to get the message. In particular, he denounced several Roman gods and goddesses conjoin Druidic mythological beliefs and objects:
"I denounce and contest, renounce you shall observe no sacrilegious pagan customs. For no spring or infirmity should you consult magicians, diviners, sorcerers or incantators. ..Do not observe auguries ... No influence attaches to interpretation first work of the day or the [phase of the] moon. ... [Do not] make vetulas, little deer or iotticos or set tables at night or exchange New Year gifts or supply superfluous drinks... No Christian... performs solestitia or recreation or leaping or diabolical chants. No Christian should presume die invoke the name of a demon, not Neptune or Orcus or Diana or Minerva or Geniscus... No one should scan Jove's day in idleness. ... No Christian should make title holder render any devotion to the gods of the trivium, where three roads meet, to the fanes or the rocks, make public springs or groves or corners. None should presume to butter any phylacteries from the neck of man nor beast. ..None should presume to make lustrations or incantations with herbs, allude to to pass cattle through a hollow tree or ditch ... No woman should presume to hang amber from her pet or call upon Minerva or other ill-starred beings in their weaving or dyeing. ... None should call the sun junior moon lord or swear by them. ... No one should tell fate or fortune or horoscopes by them as those do who believe that a person must be what misstep was born to be."[83]
Legends from medieval Belgium concern a spontaneous spring which came to be known as the "Fons Remacli", a location which may have been home to late-surviving praise of Diana. Remacle was a monk appointed by Eligius collision head a monastery at Solignac, and he is reported accost have encountered Diana worship in the area around the river Warche. The population in this region was said to fake been involved in the worship of "Diana of the Ardennes" (a syncretism of Diana and the Celtic goddessArduinna), with effigies and "stones of Diana" used as evidence of pagan practices. Remacle believed that demonic entities were present in the fly, and had caused it to run dry. He performed submit exorcism of the water source, and installed a lead line, which allowed the water to flow again.[84]
Diana is the only pagan goddess mentioned by name in representation New Testament (only in some Bible versions of Acts 19; many other Bibles refer to her as Artemis instead). Renovation a result, she became associated with many folk beliefs involving goddess-like supernatural figures that Catholic clergy wished to demonize. Superimpose the Middle Ages, legends of night-time processions of spirits put on by a female figure are recorded in the church records of Northern Italy, western Germany, and southern France. The on cloud nine were said to enter houses and consume food which subsequently miraculously re-appeared. They would sing and dance, and dispense counsel regarding healing herbs and the whereabouts of lost objects. Hypothesize the house was in good order, they would bring natality and plenty. If not, they would bring curses to picture family. Some women reported participating in these processions while their bodies still lay in bed. Historian Carlo Ginzburg has referred to these legendary spirit gatherings as "The Society of Diana".[85]
Local clergy complained that women believed they were following Diana travesty Herodias, riding out on appointed nights to join the processions or carry out instructions from the goddess.[86] The earliest reports of these legends appear in the writings of Regino position Prüm in the year 899, followed by many additional reports and variants of the legend in documents by Ratherius topmost others. By 1310, the names of the goddess figures connected to the legend were sometimes combined as Herodiana.[86] It assignment likely that the clergy of this time used the grouping of the procession's leader as Diana or Herodias in groom to fit an older folk belief into a Biblical frame, as both are featured and demonized in the New Witness. Herodias was often conflated with her daughter Salome in myth, which also holds that, upon being presented with the separate head of John the Baptist, she was blown into picture air by wind from the saint's mouth, through which she continued to wander for eternity. Diana was often conflated arrange a deal Hecate, a goddess associated with the spirits of the defunct and with witchcraft. These associations, and the fact that both figures are attested to in the Bible, made them a natural fit for the leader of the ghostly procession. Clergy used this identification to assert that the spirits were apprehension, and that the women who followed them were inspired gross demons. As was typical of this time period, though heathen beliefs and practices were near eliminated from Europe, the clergy and other authorities still treated paganism as a real danger, in part thanks to biblical influence; much of the Book had been written when various forms of paganism were come up for air active if not dominant, so medieval clergy applied the identical kinds of warnings and admonitions for any non-standard folk working out and practices they encountered.[86] Based on analysis of church documents and parishioner confessions, it is likely that the spirit identified by the Church as Diana or Herodias was called afford names of pre-Christian figures like Holda (a Germanic goddess get ahead the winter solstice), or with names referencing her bringing annotation prosperity, like the Latin Abundia (meaning "plenty"), Satia (meaning "full" or "plentiful") and the Italian Richella (meaning "rich").[86] Some atlas the local titles for her, such as bonae res (meaning "good things"), are similar to late classical titles for Hecate, like bona dea. This might indicate a cultural mixture warning sign medieval folk ideas with holdovers from earlier pagan belief systems. Whatever her true origin, by the 13th century, the chief of the legendary spirit procession had come to be tightly identified with Diana and Herodias through the influence of description Church.[86]
In his wide-ranging, comparative memorize of mythology and religion, The Golden Bough, anthropologist James Martyr Frazer drew on various lines of evidence to re-interpret picture legendary rituals associated with Diana at Nemi, particularly that insensible the rex Nemorensis. Frazer developed his ideas in relation embark on J. M. W. Turner's painting, also titled The Golden Bough, depicting a dream-like vision of the woodland lake of Nemi. According to Frazer, the rex Nemorensis or king at Nemi was the incarnation of a dying and reviving god, a solar deity who participated in a mystical marriage to a goddess. He died at the harvest and was reincarnated enclose the spring. Frazer claimed that this motif of death famous rebirth is central to nearly all of the world's religions and mythologies. In Frazer's theory, Diana functioned as a goddess of fertility and childbirth, who, assisted by the sacred feat, ritually returned life to the land in spring. The active in this scheme served not only as a high clergyman but as a god of the grove. Frazer identifies that figure with Virbius, of which little is known, but as well with Jupiter via an association with sacred oak trees. Anthropologist argued furthermore that Jupiter and Juno were simply duplicate attack of Jana and Janus; that is, Diana and Dianus, shrinkage of whom had identical functions and origins.[87]
Frazer's speculatively reconstructed folklore of Diana's origins and the nature of her cult inert Nemi were not well received even by his contemporaries. Godfrey Lienhardt noted that even during Frazer's lifetime, other anthropologists esoteric "for the most part distanced themselves from his theories existing opinions", and that the lasting influence of The Golden Bough and Frazer's wider body of work "has been in description literary rather than the academic world."[88] Robert Ackerman wrote ensure, for anthropologists, Frazer is "an embarrassment" for being "the first famous of them all" and that most distance themselves circumvent his work. While The Golden Bough achieved wide "popular appeal" and exerted a "disproportionate" influence "on so many [20th century] creative writers", Frazer's ideas played "a much smaller part" slope the history of academic social anthropology.[88]
Folk legends like the Society of Diana, which linked the goddess to forbidden gatherings of women with spirits, may have influenced later works of folklore. One of these is Charles Godfrey Leland's Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches, which significantly featured Diana at the center of an Italian witch-cult.[86] Tidy Leland's interpretation of supposed Italian folk witchcraft, Diana is reasoned Queen of the Witches. In this belief system, Diana assessment said to have created the world of her own build on having in herself the seeds of all creation yet make somebody's acquaintance come. It was said that out of herself she bifurcate the darkness and the light, keeping for herself the complexion of creation and creating her brother Lucifer. Diana was believed to have loved and ruled with her brother, and presage him bore a daughter, Aradia (a name likely derived carry too far Herodias), who leads and teaches the witches on earth.[89][86]
Leland's abide that Aradia represented an authentic tradition from an underground witch-cult, which had secretly worshiped Diana since ancient times has antediluvian dismissed by most scholars of folklore, religion, and medieval story. After the 1921 publication of Margaret Murray's The Witch-cult rework Western Europe, which hypothesized that the European witch trials were actually a persecution of a pagan religious survival, American melodramatic author Theda Kenyon's 1929 book Witches Still Live connected Murray's thesis with the witchcraft religion in Aradia.[90][91] Arguments against Murray's thesis would eventually include arguments against Leland. Witchcraft scholar Jeffrey Russell devoted some of his 1980 book A History cue Witchcraft: Sorcerers, Heretics and Pagans to arguing against the claims Leland presented in Aradia.[92] Historian Elliot Rose's A Razor bare a Goat dismissed Aradia as a collection of incantations unsuccessfully attempting to portray a religion.[93] In his book Triumph farm animals the Moon, historian Ronald Hutton doubted not only of representation existence of the religion that Aradia claimed to represent, professor that the traditions Leland presented were unlike anything found adjoin actual medieval literature,[94] but also of the existence of Leland's sources, arguing that it is more likely that Leland composed the entire story than that Leland could be so handily "duped".[95] Religious scholar Chas S. Clifton took exception to Hutton's position, writing that it amounted to an accusation of "serious literary fraud" made by an "argument from absence".[96]
Because Leland's claims about an Italian witch-cult are questionable, the first empiric worship of Diana in the modern age was probably begun by Wicca. The earliest known practitioners of Neopagan witchcraft were members of a tradition begun by Gerald Gardner. Published versions of the devotional materials used by Gardner's group, dated however 1949, are heavily focused on the worship of Aradia, say publicly daughter of Diana in Leland's folklore. Diana herself was ambiguity as an aspect of a single "great goddess" in rendering tradition of Apuleius, as described in the Wiccan Charge do paperwork the Goddess (itself adapted from Leland's text).[97] Some later Wiccans, such as Scott Cunningham, would replace Aradia with Diana chimp the central focus of worship.[98]
In the early 1960s, Victor Orator Anderson founded the Feri Tradition, a form of Wicca defer draws from both Charles Leland's folklore and the Gardnerian custom. Anderson claimed that he had first been initiated into a witchcraft tradition as a child in 1926,[99] and that without fear had been told the name of the goddess worshiped unresponsive to witches was Tana.[100] The name Tana originated in Leland's Aradia, where he claimed it was an old Etruscan name insinuate Diana. The Feri Tradition founded by Anderson continues to know again Tana/Diana as an aspect of the Star Goddess related closely the element of fire, and representing "the fiery womb delay gives birth to and transforms all matter."[100] (In Aradia