Diana (mythology)

Diana de Versailles, Roman copy of the original Greek attributed to Leocares (Museum of the Louvre, Paris).

Diana hunter, work by Peter Paul Rubens, private collection, Madrid.

Source of Diana Cazadora, at Paseo de la Reforma Avenue, Mexico City.

In Roman mythology, Diana was the virgin goddess of the hunt, protector of nature and the Moon. The equivalent Greek goddess of her in literature is Artemis, although in terms of worship she was of Italic origin.

Diana's face is the ultimate representation of beauty and tenderness.

Functions

Diana was originally a goddess of the hunt, associated with animals and the wilds. She later became a moon goddess, supplanting Luna and also being an emblem of chastity. Her oak groves were especially consecrated to him. She was praised in poetry for her strength, athletic grace, beauty, and her hunting skills.

In practice it formed a trinity with two other Roman deities: Egeria, the water nymph, her servant and assistant midwife, and Virbius, the god of the woods. Etymologically, the name Diana means "of the day" (Lat. dies= day) or "divine" (Lat. diva = divine), being therefore its Greek parallel in this sense (although not in worship) Dione in Dodona.

Worship

Diana was worshiped at a festival held on 11 August, when King Servius Tullius, a slave by birth, dedicated an altar to her on the Aventine Hill in the mid-6th century BCE. Being in this place, and therefore outside the pomerium, means that the cult of Diana remained essentially "foreign", like that of Bacchus, and was never officially "transferred" to Rome as it had been. out Juno after the sack of Veii. This temple on the Aventine Hill was common to the Latin tribes.

It seems that his cult originated from Aricia, where his priest, the Rex Nemorensis, remained.

Diana of the Woods was soon fully Hellenized, "a process culminating in Diana's appearance alongside Apollo in the first lectisternium of Rome". Diana was held in great reverence by the lower class citizens and slaves, these being able to receive asylum in their temples.

Art

Although some Roman patrons ordered marble replicas of the specifically Anatolian "Diana" of Ephesus, where the Temple of Artemis stood, the goddess was often depicted to the Romans in her Greek garb. If she was accompanied by a stag, as in the Diana of Versailles, it was because she was the patroness of the hunt. The deer may also be a sneaky reference to the myth of Actaeon.

Images

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  Diana hunter, Rubens (1617-1620)