DIANA. – Goddess of the ancient Roman and Italic religion. A large part of scholars hold that she was an originally Italic divinity who only under Greek influence was assimilated to Artemis; some maintain that D. was from the outset nothing other than the Greek goddess adopted in Italy. In the public cult of Apollo, D. already had a part in the 5th century B.C.; yet her Italic cult also possesses distinctive features lacking any close analogy with the Greek cult of Artemis.
The goddess’s name is probably explained by a root conveying the meaning of “brightness” (div., Dius, Diviana).
She was venerated above all in woodland: her place of worship in the ager Tusculanus and that ad compitum Anagninum are described as lucus, that of the Mons Algidus and that of the Arician valley as nemus, and that of Tibur as silva.
Her most important places of worship outside Rome are: 1) Mount Tifata near Capua (the church of S. Angelo in Formia now stands on the site of the sanctuary); 2) the Arician valley, with the Nemus Dianae and the lake (now Lake Nemi), also called the “speculum Dianae.” While the remains of the Tifatan sanctuary do indeed demonstrate its antiquity (going back to the 6th century B.C.), they provide only vague indications of the character of the cult; tradition, on the other hand, has preserved the highly singular features of the equally ancient Nemorensian cult. The cult official was called rex Nemorensis and had to be a runaway slave who, in order to succeed to the office, had to kill the incumbent priest in a ritual duel. Two other divinities were venerated within the sacred enclosure of D. Nemorensis: Egeria, a goddess invoked by women in childbirth, and Virbius who, according to the myth, was Hippolytus, hidden in Italy by Artemis; of the cult of this god it is known only that horses were not permitted to enter his enclosure and that his cult image was not to be touched. The cult had a federal character for the Latin peoples. It cannot be decided with certainty whether this character belonged to the cult from its beginning or whether the cult predated it; nor is the position of the dictator Egerius Laevius and of the eight “peoples” appearing in the relevant fragment of Cato clear. But the existence of the political character is undeniable and particularly significant, given that it will also be found in the Roman cult of the goddess. The feast of D. Nemorensis fell on 13 August (the day of the full moon). The votive offerings of the sanctuary, although for the most part they date only from imperial times, document various characteristics of the goddess: goddess of the hunt, lunar goddess, goddess of fertility.
At Rome, the name of D. does not appear in the oldest calendar; tradition attributes the foundation of her temple on the Aventine to Servius Tullius. The Aventine cult displays several analogies with the Nemorensian cult: its feast likewise falls on 13 August; the cult has a federal character, and the temple is commune Latinorum, though under the aegis of Rome, as is shown especially by the cult legend of its foundation; and while the figure of the rex Nemorensis has no parallel at Rome, here too the goddess is not without connections with slaves: her temple is an asylum for them and her feast is servorum dies festus.
Politically, the cult of D. Aventina gathered around itself the religious interests of the plebs. The cult image of the goddess was of the type of the Artemis of Ephesus and came, at least according to tradition, from the Greek colonists of Massilia. Women celebrated the August feast with particular attention to their beauty and their hair. In addition to the Aventine temple, whose antiquity is also demonstrated by the fact that its written law subsequently served as a permanent model for the other temples, D. had other sanctuaries at Rome, of indeterminate age but undoubtedly ancient: among them was that of the vicus Patricius, reserved exclusively for women.
From the beginning of the Roman public cult of Apollo, D. appears to have been conceived, according to the Greek mythological scheme, as his sister. In literary testimonies, her complex archaic characteristics tend to disappear behind the Hellenistic form of Artemis; only the goddess’s relations with the hunt and those with the moon, taken as far as identification, are emphasized. Beneath the literary veneer, however, the original complexity and importance of the divine figure continue to survive, as is shown by the various instances of interpretatio romana in the provincial religions (e.g., in Illyricum), in which the name of D. is given to great divinities that certainly cannot be reduced to the characteristics of a huntress and lunar goddess.
Angelo Brelich
D. IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. — With D. the Vulgate renders in Acts 19:24, 27 f., 34 f. the Ἄρτεμις of the original text.
But between the Artemis of the Greeks and the D. of the Latins (identified as a result of syncretism) and the Ephesian Artemis of whom the Acts speak, there are radical differences. The first is, for Greeks and Latins alike, a typically virginal divinity, protectress of maidens and young brides; the second is a goddess of fertility and motherhood, for human beings as well as for plants and animals. The one, goddess of the moon and of the woods, is conceived as a virgin huntress, armed with bow and arrows with which she strikes anyone who presumes to compete with her (the myth of Orion); the other is a deity of a perfectly Asiatic and rather monstrous type, with its chest covered with breasts (hence the epithet πολίμαστος, “many-breasted”: St. Jerome, Pral. in Epist. ad Eph.: PL 26, 470), and the lower part of the body enclosed in a kind of sheath on which figures of animals were carved. Such, it was said, had descended from heaven: the image of Artemis venerated in the celebrated temple of Ephesus. It was a rough wooden cylinder, tapered toward the bottom and painted black, perhaps an old fetish, to which parts of ivory and gold had been attached. The characteristics of the Ephesian Artemis bring her close to the Magna Mater (v. CIBELE) of Phrygia and to the Phoenician Astarte. The Greek colonizers are supposed to have given the ancient Asian deity the name and significance of Artemis. Sacred prostitution was widely practiced in her cult. Her temple at Ephesus (the Artemision), one of the seven wonders of the world, was served by various orders of priests and priestesses. During their term of office, these were required to practice virginity—probably as a consequence of the syncretism by which the Ephesian goddess had been brought close to the virgin daughter of Jupiter and Latona. At the head of the cult were the μεγάλωξοι, originally eunuchs.
As is also evident from Acts 19, an entire industry flourished at Ephesus in the shadow of Artemis: statuettes of the goddess, little temples reproducing the Ephesian sanctuary, or niches containing the image of the deity, amulets of every kind, and arcane writings (ephesia grammata), to which magical power was attributed for the most varied necessities of life.
And it was the silversmiths, headed by Demetrius in his capacity as agitator, who rose in revolt against Paul (Acts 19:23-41), whose preaching threatened seriously to damage the interests of their trade. The cry of the excited crowd, μεγάλη ἡ Ἀρτεμις Ἐφεσίων, contained the goddess’s characteristic title: the great Artemis; a kind of liturgical invocation.
The festivals (Artemisia, Ephesia, Ecumenia), organized by the Asiarchs and attracting many devotees and pleasure-seekers to Ephesus, took place in the month of Artemision (April-May). This was probably the occasion chosen by Demetrius for the uprising against the dangerous work of Paul, which, from Ephesus, spread to other centers of Asia, with serious consequences for the market in sacred objects dedicated to Artemis.