Getting to know Diana

Glinister, Fay 2019. Getting to know Diana. Bispham, Edward and Miano, Daniele, eds. Gods and Goddesses in Ancient Italy, London: Routledge, pp. 47-62.

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

Over the course of the middle Republic, Feronia Diana had also had more and more to do with Artemis’ twin Apollo, culminating in their formal pairing in cult in the notionally Greek lectisternium of 217 BC. Diana’s association with the wilds and with mountainous areas is very prominent in Latin poetry, as for example Catullus’ description of her as ‘mistress of mountains and verdant woodlands, hidden glades and resounding rivers’. Concepts of sovereignty are bound up in the story concerning her temple on the Aventine hill, in which the Romans gained by trickery Diana’s blessing of empire. Under Augustus, Diana was also strongly affiliated to the worship of the Lares, another cult heavily marketed by the emperor – and another nod to domesticity and civilisation, in this goddess supposedly of the wilderness. Worshippers themselves constructed and reconstructed a god like Diana, building a flexible and adaptive deity who answered to their immediate religious requirements.

Item Type:	Book Section
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	History, Archaeology and Religion
Publisher:	Routledge
ISBN:	9781138697553
Last Modified:	15 Nov 2023 15:00
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/163793

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item