Diana

 

(dīăn'ə) , in Roman religion, goddess of the moon, forests, animals, and women in childbirth. She was probably originally a forest goddess and a special patroness of women. She was identified with the Greek Artemis, and at her temple on the Aventine at Rome she was honored as the virgin goddess. Her most famous cult, however, was at Aricia, near Lake Nemi; there she was worshiped as an earth goddess and was associated with fertility rites and with the Great Mother Goddess.

In Roman mythology, Diana was the goddess of the hunt, in literature the equivalent of the Greek goddess Artemis, though in cult she was Italic in origin. Born with her twin brother Apollo on the island of Delos, Diana was the daughter of Jupiter and Latona.

Hunting goddess

Diana was the hunting goddess, associated with wild animals and woodlands. She also later became a moon goddess, supplanting Luna, and was an emblem of chastity. Oak groves were especially sacred to her. She was praised in poetry for her strength, athletic grace, beauty and hunting skill. In practice she made up a trinity with two other Roman deities: Egeria the water nymph, her servant and assistant midwife; and Virbius, the woodland god. In her etymology, "Diana" is simply :"the Goddess", with a Greek parallel in the name — though not the cult practice — of Dione at Dodona.

Diana was worshipped at a festival on August 13,^[1] when King Servius Tullius, himself born a slave, dedicated her shrine on the Aventine Hill in the mid-sixth century BCE. Being placed on the Aventine, and thus outside the pomerium, meant that Diana's cult essentially remained a 'foreign' one, like that of Bacchus; she was never officially 'transferred' to Rome as Juno was after the sack of Veii. It seems that her cult originated in Aricia,^[2] where her priest, the Rex Nemorensis remained. There the simple open-air fane was held in common by the Latin tribes,^[3] which Rome aspired to weld into a league and direct. Diana of the wood was soon thoroughly Hellenized,^[4] "a process which culminated with the appearance of Diana beside Apollo in the first lectisternium at Rome".^[5] Diana was regarded with great reverence by lower-class citizens and slaves; slaves could receive asylum in her temples.

Though some Roman patrons ordered marble replicas of the specifically Anatolian "Diana" of Ephesus, where the Temple of Artemis stood, Diana was usually depicted for educated Romans in her Greek guise. If she is accompanied by a deer, as in the Diana of Versailles (illustration, above right) this is because Diana was the patroness of hunting. The deer may 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 to kill him.

Diana worship is mentioned in the book of Acts in the Bible (Chapter 19, verses 21-41).

Legacy

Diana's cult has been related in Early Modern Europe to the cult of Nicevenn (aka Dame Habond, Perchta, Herodiana, etc.). She was related to myths of a female Wild Hunt, close to the Benandantis' struggles against evil witches.

Since the Renaissance the mythic Diana has often been expressed in the visual and dramatic arts, including the opera L'arbore di Diana. In the sixteenth century, Diana's image figured prominently at the Château de Fontainebleau, in deference to Diane de Poitiers, mistress of two French kings. At Versailles she was incorporated into the Olympian iconography with which Louis XIV, the Apollo-like "Sun King" liked to surround himself.

There are also references to her in common literature. In Shakespeare's play, Romeo and Juliet, many references are made to Diana. Rosaline, a beautiful woman who has sworn to chastity, is said to have "Dian's wit". Later on in the play, Romeo says, "It is the East, and Juliet is the sun. Arise fair sun, and kill the envious moon." He is saying that Juliet is better than Diana and Rosaline for not swearing chastity. Diana is also a character in the 1876 Leo Delibe ballet 'Sylvia'. The plot deals with Sylvia, one of Diana's nymphs and sworn to chastity and Diana's assault on Sylvia's affections for the shepherd Amyntas.

Both the Romanian word for "fairy", zânǎ^[6] and the Asturian word for "water nymph", xana, seem to come from the name of Diana.

In Jean Cocteau's 1946 film La Belle et la Bête it is Diana's power which has transformed and imprisoned the beast.

Modern day

Diana remains an important figure in some modern mythologies. Those who believe that prehistoric peoples lived in matriarchal societies consider Diana to have originated in a mother goddess worshipped at that time.

Today there is a branch of Wicca named for her, which is characterized by an exclusive focus on the feminine aspect of the Divine.

In the funeral oration of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997, her brother drew an ironic analogy between the ancient goddess of hunting and his sister - 'the most hunted person of the modern age'.

Diana, like many aspects of mythology, is depicted in the comic books Asterix. In the Roman temples, many times can be seen in the background a statue of Diana, depicted as a fat lady, usually sitting on a stag, who appears to be suffering.

Notes

See also

• Wild Hunt

External links

• Landscape with Diana and Callisto painting
• Diana and her Nymphs painting

Roman mythology series
Major deities	Apollo · Ceres · Diana · Divus Augustus · Fortuna · Divus Julius · Juno · Jupiter · Lares · Mars · Mercury · Minerva · Neptune · Pluto · Quirinus · Sol · Venus · Vesta · Vulcan

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