Diana

In Roman mythology, Diana was the virgin goddess of the hunt, the equivalent of the Greek goddess Artemis. Born with her twin brother Apollo on the island of Delos, Diana was the daughter of Jupiter and Latona.

Diana was the perpetually virginal huntress 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 for her strength, athletic grace, beauty and hunting skill. She made up a trinity with two other Roman deities: Egeria the water nymph, her servant and assistant midwife; and Virbius, the woodland god.

Diana was worshipped in a temple on the Aventine Hill and at the city of Ephesus, where the Temple of Artemis stood. 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, where her priest, the Rex Nemorensis remained. Diana was regarded with great reverence by lower-class citizens and slaves; slaves could receive asylum in her temples. She was worshipped at a festival on August 13, when King Servius Tullius, himself born a slave, dedicated her shrine on the Aventine.

Diana is usually depicted with a deer. This is because Diana was the patroness of hunting, and also because she is said to have transformed a man she found spying on her while taking a bath into a deer when he tried to flee her.

Modern Day

Diana remains an important figure in some modern mythologies. In Freemasonry, she is considered a symbol of imagination, sensibility, and the creative insanity of poets and artists. Those who believe that prehistoric peoples lived in matriarchal societies consider Diana to have originated in a mother goddess worshipped at that time, and she is still worshiped today by women practicing the religion known as Dianic Wicca.

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