Section 1. Diana as a Goddess of Fertility.
WE have seen that according to a widespread belief, which is not without a foundation in
fact, plants reproduce their kinds through the sexual union of male and female elements, and
that on the principle of homoeopathic or imitative magic this reproduction is supposed to be
stimulated by the real or mock marriage of men and women, who masquerade for the time
being as spirits of vegetation. Such magical dramas have played a great part in the popular
festivals of Europe, and based as they are on a very crude conception of natural law, it is
clear that they must have been handed down from a remote antiquity. We shall hardly,
therefore, err in assuming that they date from a time when the forefathers of the civilised
nations of Europe were still barbarians, herding their cattle and cultivating patches of corn
in the clearings of the vast forests, which then covered the greater part of the continent,
from the Mediterranean to the Arctic Ocean. But if these old spells and enchantments for
the growth of leaves and blossoms, of grass and flowers and fruit, have lingered down to
our own time in the shape of pastoral plays and popular merry-makings, is it not reasonable
to suppose that they survived in less attenuated forms some two thousand years ago
among the civilised peoples of antiquity? Or, to put it otherwise, is it not likely that in
certain festivals of the ancients we may be able to detect the equivalents of our May Day,
Whitsuntide, and Midsummer celebrations, with this difference, that in those days the
ceremonies had not yet dwindled into mere shows and pageants, but were still religious or
magical rites, in which the actors consciously supported the high parts of gods and
goddesses? Now in the first chapter of this book we found reason to believe that the
priest who bore the title of King of the Wood at Nemi had for his mate the goddess of the
grove, Diana herself. May not he and she, as King and Queen of the Wood, have been
serious counterparts of the merry mummers who play the King and Queen of May, the
Whitsuntide Bridegroom and Bride in modern Europe? and may not their union have been
yearly celebrated in a theogamy or divine marriage? Such dramatic weddings of gods and
goddesses, as we shall see presently, were carried out as solemn religious rites in many parts
of the ancient world; hence there is no intrinsic improbability in the supposition that the
sacred grove at Nemi may have been the scene of an annual ceremony of this sort. Direct
evidence that it was so there is none, but analogy pleads in favour of the view, as I shall
now endeavour to show. 1
Diana was essentially a goddess of the woodlands, as Ceres was a goddess of the corn
and Bacchus a god of the vine. Her sanctuaries were commonly in groves, indeed every
grove was sacred to her, and she is often associated with the forest god Silvanus in
dedications. But whatever her origin may have been, Diana was not always a mere goddess
of trees. Like her Greek sister Artemis, she appears to have developed into a personification
of the teeming life of nature, both animal and vegetable. As mistress of the greenwood she
would naturally be thought to own the beasts, whether wild or tame, that ranged through
it, lurking for their prey in its gloomy depths, munching the fresh leaves and shoots among
the boughs, or cropping the herbage in the open glades and dells. Thus she might come to
be the patron goddess both of hunters and herdsmen, just as Silvanus was the god not
only of woods, but of cattle. Similarly in Finland the wild beasts of the forest were regarded
as the herds of the woodland god Tapio and of his stately and beautiful wife. No man might
slay one of these animals without the gracious permission of their divine owners. Hence the
hunter prayed to the sylvan deities, and vowed rich offerings to them if they would drive
the game across his path. And cattle also seem to have enjoyed the protection of those
spirits of the woods, both when they were in their stalls and while they strayed in the
forest. Before the Gayos of Sumatra hunt deer, wild goats, or wild pigs with hounds in the
woods, they deem it necessary to obtain the leave of the unseen Lord of the forest. This is
done according to a prescribed form by a man who has special skill in woodcraft. He lays
down a quid of betel before a stake which is cut in a particular way to represent the Lord of
the Wood, and having done so he prays to the spirit to signify his consent or refusal. In his
treatise on hunting, Arrian tells us that the Celts used to offer an annual sacrifice to Artemis
on her birthday, purchasing the sacrificial victim with the fines which they had paid into her
treasury for every fox, hare, and roe that they had killed in the course of the year. The
custom clearly implied that the wild beasts belonged to the goddess, and that she must be
compensated for their slaughter. 2
But Diana was not merely a patroness of wild beasts, a mistress of woods and hills, of
lonely glades and sounding rivers; conceived as the moon, and especially, it would seem, as
the yellow harvest moon, she filled the farmer's grange with goodly fruits, and heard the
prayers of women in travail. In her sacred grove at Nemi, as we have seen, she was
especially worshipped as a goddess of childbirth, who bestowed offspring on men and
women. Thus Diana, like the Greek Artemis, with whom she was constantly identified, may
be described as a goddess of nature in general and of fertility in particular. We need not
wonder, therefore, that in her sanctuary on the Aventine she was represented by an image
copied from the many-breasted idol of the Ephesian Artemis, with all its crowded emblems
of exuberant fecundity. Hence too we can understand why an ancient Roman law,
attributed to King Tullus Hostilius, prescribed that, when incest had been committed, an
expiatory sacrifice should be offered by the pontiffs in the grove of Diana. For we know
that the crime of incest is commonly supposed to cause a dearth; hence it would be meet
that atonement for the offence should be made to the goddess of fertility. 3
Now on the principle that the goddess of fertility must herself be fertile, it behoved Diana
to have a male partner. Her mate, if the testimony of Servius may be trusted, was that
Virbius who had his representative, or perhaps rather his embodiment, in the King of the
Wood at Nemi. The aim of their union would be to promote the fruitfulness of the earth, of
animals, and of mankind; and it might naturally be thought that this object would be more
surely attained if the sacred nuptials were celebrated every year, the parts of the divine
bride and bridegroom being played either by their images or by living persons. No ancient
writer mentions that this was done in the grove at Nemi; but our knowledge of the Arician
ritual is so scanty that the want of information on this head can hardly count as a fatal
objection to the theory. That theory, in the absence of direct evidence, must necessarily be
based on the analogy of similar customs practised elsewhere. Some modern examples of
such customs, more or less degenerate, were described in the last chapter. Here we shall
consider their ancient counterparts. 4