Section 1. Diana and Virbius.
WHO does not know Turner's picture of the Golden Bough? The scene,
suffused with the golden glow of imagination in which the divine mind of
Turner steeped and transfigured even the fairest natural landscape, is a
dream-like vision of the little woodland lake of Nemi-"Diana's Mirror,"
as it was called by the ancients. No one who has seen that calm water,
lapped in a green hollow of the Alban hills, can ever forget it. The two
characteristic Italian villages which slumber on its banks, and the
equally Italian palace whose terraced gardens descend steeply to the
lake, hardly break the stillness and even the solitariness of the scene.
Diana herself might still linger by this lonely shore, still haunt these
woodlands wild.
In antiquity this sylvan landscape was the scene of a strange and
recurring tragedy. On the northern shore of the lake, right under the
precipitous cliffs on which the modern village of Nemi is perched, stood
the sacred grove and sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis, or Diana of the
Wood. The lake and the grove were sometimes known as the lake and grove
of Aricia. But the town of Aricia (the modern La Riccia) was situated
about three miles off, at the foot of the Alban Mount, and separated by
a steep descent from the lake, which lies in a small crater-like hollow
on the mountain side. In this sacred grove there grew a certain tree
round which at any time of the day, and probably far into the night, a
grim figure might be seen to prowl. In his hand he carried a drawn
sword, and he kept peering warily about him as if at every instant he
expected to be set upon by an enemy. He was a priest and a murderer; and
the man for whom he looked was sooner or later to murder him and hold
the priesthood in his stead. Such was the rule of the sanctuary. A
candidate for the priesthood could only succeed to office by slaying the
priest, and having slain him, he retained office till he was himself
slain by a stronger or a craftier. 2
The post which he held by this precarious tenure carried with it the
title of king; but surely no crowned head ever lay uneasier, or was
visited by more evil dreams, than his. For year in, year out, in summer
and winter, in fair weather and in foul, he had to keep his lonely
watch, and whenever he snatched a troubled slumber it was at the peril
of his life. The least relaxation of his vigilance, the smallest
abatement of his strength of limb or skill of fence, put him in
jeopardy; grey hairs might seal his death-warrant. To gentle and pious
pilgrims at the shrine the sight of him might well seem to darken the
fair landscape, as when a cloud suddenly blots the sun on a bright day.
The dreamy blue of Italian skies, the dappled shade of summer woods, and
the sparkle of waves in the sun, can have accorded but ill with that
stern and sinister figure. Rather we picture to ourselves the scene as
it may have been witnessed by a belated wayfarer on one of those wild
autumn nights when the dead leaves are falling thick, and the winds seem
to sing the dirge of the dying year. It is a sombre picture, set to
melancholy music-the background of forest showing black and jagged
against a lowering and stormy sky, the sighing of the wind in the
branches, the rustle of the withered leaves under foot, the lapping of
the cold water on the shore, and in the foreground, pacing to and fro,
now in twilight and now in gloom, a dark figure with a glitter of steel
at the shoulder whenever the pale moon, riding clear of the cloud-rack,
peers down at him through the matted boughs. 3
The strange rule of this priesthood has no parallel in classical
antiquity, and cannot be explained from it. To find an explanation we
must go farther afield. No one will probably deny that such a custom
savours of a barbarous age, and, surviving into imperial times, stands
out in striking isolation from the polished Italian society of the day,
like a primaeval rock rising from a smooth-shaven lawn. It is the very
rudeness and barbarity of the custom which allow us a hope of explaining
it. For recent researches into the early history of man have revealed
the essential similarity with which, under many superficial differences,
the human mind has elaborated its first crude philosophy of life.
Accordingly, if we can show that a barbarous custom, like that of the
priesthood of Nemi, has existed elsewhere; if we can detect the motives
which led to its institution; if we can prove that these motives have
operated widely, perhaps universally, in human society, producing in
varied circumstances a variety of institutions specifically different
but generically alike; if we can show, lastly, that these very motives,
with some of their derivative institutions, were actually at work in
classical antiquity; then we may fairly infer that at a remoter age the
same motives gave birth to the priesthood of Nemi. Such an inference, in
default of direct evidence as to how the priesthood did actually arise,
can never amount to demonstration. But it will be more or less probable
according to the degree of completeness with which it fulfils the
conditions I have indicated. The object of this book is, by meeting
these conditions, to offer a fairly probable explanation of the
priesthood of Nemi. 4
I begin by setting forth the few facts and legends which have come
down to us on the subject. According to one story the worship of Diana
at Nemi was instituted by Orestes, who, after killing Thoas, King of the
Tauric Chersonese (the Crimea), fled with his sister to Italy, bringing
with him the image of the Tauric Diana hidden in a faggot of sticks.
After his death his bones were transported from Aricia to Rome and
buried in front of the temple of Saturn, on the Capitoline slope, beside
the temple of Concord. The bloody ritual which legend ascribed to the
Tauric Diana is familiar to classical readers; it is said that every
stranger who landed on the shore was sacrificed on her altar. But
transported to Italy, the rite assumed a milder form. Within the
sanctuary at Nemi grew a certain tree of which no branch might be
broken. Only a runaway slave was allowed to break off, if he could, one
of its boughs. Success in the attempt entitled him to fight the priest
in single combat, and if he slew him he reigned in his stead with the
title of King of the Wood (Rex Nemorensis). According to the public
opinion of the ancients the fateful branch was that Golden Bough which,
at the Sibyl's bidding, Aeneas plucked before he essayed the perilous
journey to the world of the dead. The flight of the slave represented,
it was said, the flight of Orestes; his combat with the priest was a
reminiscence of the human sacrifices once offered to the Tauric Diana.
This rule of succession by the sword was observed down to imperial
times; for amongst his other freaks Caligula, thinking that the priest
of Nemi had held office too long, hired a more stalwart ruffian to slay
him; and a Greek traveller, who visited Italy in the age of the
Antonines, remarks that down to his time the priesthood was still the
prize of victory in a single combat. 5
Of the worship of Diana at Nemi some leading features can still be
made out. From the votive offerings which have been found on the site,
it appears that she was conceived of especially as a huntress, and
further as blessing men and women with offspring, and granting expectant
mothers an easy delivery. Again, fire seems to have played a foremost
part in her ritual. For during her annual festival, held on the
thirteenth of August, at the hottest time of the year, her grove shone
with a multitude of torches, whose ruddy glare was reflected by the
lake; and throughout the length and breadth of Italy the day was kept
with holy rites at every domestic hearth. Bronze statuettes found in her
precinct represent the goddess herself holding a torch in her raised
right hand; and women whose prayers had been heard by her came crowned
with wreaths and bearing lighted torches to the sanctuary in fulfilment
of their vows. Some one unknown dedicated a perpetually burning lamp in
a little shrine at Nemi for the safety of the Emperor Claudius and his
family. The terra-cotta lamps which have been discovered in the grove
may perhaps have served a like purpose for humbler persons. If so, the
analogy of the custom to the Catholic practice of dedicating holy
candles in churches would be obvious. Further, the title of Vesta borne
by Diana at Nemi points clearly to the maintenance of a perpetual holy
fire in her sanctuary. A large circular basement at the north-east
corner of the temple, raised on three steps and bearing traces of a
mosaic pavement, probably supported a round temple of Diana in her
character of Vesta, like the round temple of Vesta in the Roman Forum.
Here the sacred fire would seem to have been tended by Vestal Virgins,
for the head of a Vestal in terra-cotta was found on the spot, and the
worship of a perpetual fire, cared for by holy maidens, appears to have
been common in Latium from the earliest to the latest times. Further, at
the annual festival of the goddess, hunting dogs were crowned and wild
beasts were not molested; young people went through a purificatory
ceremony in her honour; wine was brought forth, and the feast consisted
of a kid cakes served piping hot on plates of leaves, and apples still
hanging in clusters on the boughs. 6
But Diana did not reign alone in her grove at Nemi. Two lesser
divinities shared her forest sanctuary. One was Egeria, the nymph of the
clear water which, bubbling from the basaltic rocks, used to fall in
graceful cascades into the lake at the place called Le Mole, because
here were established the mills of the modern village of Nemi. The
purling of the stream as it ran over the pebbles is mentioned by Ovid,
who tells us that he had often drunk of its water. Women with child used
to sacrifice to Egeria, because she was believed, like Diana, to be able
to grant them an easy delivery. Tradition ran that the nymph had been
the wife or mistress of the wise king Numa, that he had consorted with
her in the secrecy of the sacred grove, and that the laws which he gave
the Romans had been inspired by communion with her divinity. Plutarch
compares the legend with other tales of the loves of goddesses for
mortal men, such as the love of Cybele and the Moon for the fair youths
Attis and Endymion. According to some, the trysting-place of the lovers
was not in the woods of Nemi but in a grove outside the dripping Porta
Capena at Rome, where another sacred spring of Egeria gushed from a dark
cavern. Every day the Roman Vestals fetched water from this spring to
wash the temple of Vesta, carrying it in earthenware pitchers on their
heads. In Juvenal's time the natural rock had been encased in marble,
and the hallowed spot was profaned by gangs of poor Jews, who were
suffered to squat, like gypsies, in the grove. We may suppose that the
spring which fell into the lake of Nemi was the true original Egeria,
and that when the first settlers moved down from the Alban hills to the
banks of the Tiber they brought the nymph with them and found a new home
for her in a grove outside the gates. The remains of baths which have
been discovered within the sacred precinct, together with many
terra-cotta models of various parts of the human body, suggest that the
waters of Egeria were used to heal the sick, who may have signified
their hopes or testified their gratitude by dedicating likenesses of the
diseased members to the goddess, in accordance with a custom which is
still observed in many parts of Europe. To this day it would seem that
the spring retains medicinal virtues. 7
The other of the minor deities at Nemi was Virbius. Legend had it that
Virbius was the young Greek hero Hippolytus, chaste and fair, who
learned the art of venery from the centaur Chiron, and spent all his
days in the greenwood chasing wild beasts with the virgin huntress
Artemis (the Greek counterpart of Diana) for his only comrade. Proud of
her divine society, he spurned the love of women, and this proved his
bane. For Aphrodite, stung by his scorn, inspired his stepmother Phaedra
with love of him; and when he disdained her wicked advances she falsely
accused him to his father Theseus. The slander was believed, and Theseus
prayed to his sire Poseidon to avenge the imagined wrong. So while
Hippolytus drove in a chariot by the shore of the Saronic Gulf, the
sea-god sent a fierce bull forth from the waves. The terrified horses
bolted, threw Hippolytus from the chariot, and dragged him at their
hoofs to death. But Diana, for the love she bore Hippolytus, persuaded
the leech Aesculapius to bring her fair young hunter back to life by his
simples. Jupiter, indignant that a mortal man should return from the
gates of death, thrust down the meddling leech himself to Hades. But
Diana hid her favourite from the angry god in a thick cloud, disguised
his features by adding years to his life, and then bore him far away to
the dells of Nemi, where she entrusted him to the nymph Egeria, to live
there, unknown and solitary, under the name of Virbius, in the depth of
the Italian forest. There he reigned a king, and there he dedicated a
precinct to Diana. He had a comely son, Virbius, who, undaunted by his
father's fate, drove a team of fiery steeds to join the Latins in the
war against Aeneas and the Trojans. Virbius was worshipped as a god not
only at Nemi but elsewhere; for in Campania we hear of a special priest
devoted to his service. Horses were excluded from the Arician grove and
sanctuary because horses had killed Hippolytus. It was unlawful to touch
his image. Some thought that he was the sun. "But the truth is," says
Servius, "that he is a deity associated with Diana, as Attis is
associated with the Mother of the Gods, and Erichthonius with Minerva,
and Adonis with Venus." What the nature of that association was we shall
enquire presently. Here it is worth observing that in his long and
chequered career this mythical personage has displayed a remarkable
tenacity of life. For we can hardly doubt that the Saint Hippolytus of
the Roman calendar, who was dragged by horses to death on the thirteenth
of August, Diana's own day, is no other than the Greek hero of the same
name, who, after dying twice over as a heathen sinner, has been happily
resuscitated as a Christian saint. 8
It needs no elaborate demonstration to convince us that the stories
told to account for Diana's worship at Nemi are unhistorical. Clearly
they belong to that large class of myths which are made up to explain
the origin of a religious ritual and have no other foundation than the
resemblance, real or imaginary, which may be traced between it and some
foreign ritual. The incongruity of these Nemi myths is indeed
transparent, since the foundation of the worship is traced now to
Orestes and now to Hippolytus, according as this or that feature of the
ritual has to be accounted for. The real value of such tales is that
they serve to illustrate the nature of the worship by providing a
standard with which to compare it; and further, that they bear witness
indirectly to its venerable age by showing that the true origin was lost
in the mists of a fabulous antiquity. In the latter respect these Nemi
legends are probably more to be trusted than the apparently historical
tradition, vouched for by Cato the Elder, that the sacred grove was
dedicated to Diana by a certain Egerius Baebius or Laevius of Tusculum,
a Latin dictator, on behalf of the peoples of Tusculum, Aricia,
Lanuvium, Laurentum, Cora, Tibur, Pometia, and Ardea. This tradition
indeed speaks for the great age of the sanctuary, since it seems to date
its foundation sometime before 495 B.C., the year in which Pometia was
sacked by the Romans and disappears from history. But we cannot suppose
that so barbarous a rule as that of the Arician priesthood was
deliberately instituted by a league of civilised communities, such as
the Latin cities undoubtedly were. It must have been handed down from a
time beyond the memory of man, when Italy was still in a far ruder state
than any known to us in the historical period. The credit of the
tradition is rather shaken than confirmed by another story which
ascribes the foundation of the sanctuary to a certain Manius Egerius,
who gave rise to the saying, "There are many Manii at Aricia." This
proverb some explained by alleging that Manius Egerius was the ancestor
of a long and distinguished line, whereas others thought it meant that
there were many ugly and deformed people at Aricia, and they derived the
name Manius from Mania, a bogey or bugbear to frighten children. A Roman
satirist uses the name Manius as typical of the beggars who lay in wait
for pilgrims on the Arician slopes. These differences of opinion,
together with the discrepancy between Manius Egerius of Aricia and
Egerius Laevius of Tusculum, as well as the resemblance of both names to
the mythical Egeria, excite our suspicion. Yet the tradition recorded by
Cato seems too circumstantial, and its sponsor too respectable, to allow
us to dismiss it as an idle fiction. Rather we may suppose that it
refers to some ancient restoration or reconstruction of the sanctuary,
which was actually carried out by the confederate states. At any rate it
testifies to a belief that the grove had been from early times a common
place of worship for many of the oldest cities of the country, if not
for the whole Latin confederacy. 9