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Chapter 1. The King of the Wood.
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.
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 musicthe 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
2. Artemis and Hippolytus
I have said that the Arician legends of Orestes and Hippolytus, though
worthless as history, have a certain value in so far as they may help us to
understand the worship at Nemi better by comparing it with the ritual and
myths of other sanctuaries. We must ask ourselves, Why did the author of these
legends pitch upon Orestes and Hippolytus in order to explain Virbius and the
King of the Wood? In regard to Orestes, the answer is obvious. He and the
image of the Tauric Diana, which could only be appeased with human blood, were
dragged in to render intelligible the murderous rule of succession to the
Arician priesthood. In regard to Hippolytus the case is not so plain. The
manner of his death suggests readily enough a reason for the exclusion of
horses from the grove; but this by itself seems hardly enough to account for
the identification. We must try to probe deeper by examining the worship as
well as the legend or myth of Hippolytus.
He had a famous sanctuary at his ancestral home of Troezen, situated on
that beautiful, almost landlocked bay, where groves of oranges and lemons,
with tall cypresses soaring like dark spires above the garden of Hesperides,
now clothe the strip of fertile shore at the foot of the rugged mountains.
Across the blue water of the tranquil bay, which it shelters from the open
sea, rises Poseidon's sacred island, its peaks veiled in the sombre green of
the pines. On this fair coast Hippolytus was worshipped. Within his sanctuary
stood a temple with an ancient image. His service was performed by a priest
who held office for life; every year a sacrificial festival was held in his
honour; and his untimely fate was yearly mourned, with weeping and doleful
chants, by unwedded maids. Youths and maidens dedicated locks of their hair in
his temple before marriage. His grave existed at Troezen, though the people
would not show it. It has been suggested, with great plausibility, that in the
handsome Hippolytus, beloved of Artemis, cut off in his youthful prime, and
yearly mourned by damsels, we have one of those mortal lovers of a goddess who
appear so often in ancient religion, and of whom Adonis is the most familiar
type. The rivalry of Artemis and Phaedra for the affection of Hippolytus
reproduces, it is said, under different names, the rivalry of Aphrodite and
Proserpine for the love of Adonis, for Phaedra is merely a double of
Aphrodite. The theory probably does no injustice either to Hippolytus or to
Artemis. For Artemis was originally a great goddess of fertility, and, on the
principles of early religion, she who fertilises nature must herself be
fertile, and to be that she must necessarily have a male consort. On this
view, Hippolytus was the consort of Artemis at Troezen, and the shorn tresses
offered to him by the Troezenian youths and maidens before marriage were
designed to strengthen his union with the goddess, and so to promote the
fruitfulness of the earth, of cattle, and of mankind. It is some confirmation
of this view that within the precinct of Hippolytus at Troezen there were
worshipped two female powers named Damia and Auxesia, whose connexion with the
fertility of the ground is unquestionable. When Epidaurus suffered from a
dearth, the people, in obedience to an oracle, carved images of Damia and
Auxesia out of sacred olive wood, and no sooner had they done so and set them
up than the earth bore fruit again. Moreover, at Troezen itself, and
apparently within the precinct of Hippolytus, a curious festival of
stone-throwing was held in honour of these maidens, as the Troezenians called
them; and it is easy to show that similar customs have been practised in many
lands for the express purpose of ensuring good crops. In the story of the
tragic death of the youthful Hippolytus we may discern an analogy with similar
tales of other fair but mortal youths who paid with their lives for the brief
rapture of the love of an immortal goddess. These hapless lovers were probably
not always mere myths, and the legends which traced their spilt blood in the
purple bloom of the violet, the scarlet stain of the anemone, or the crimson
flush of the rose were no idle poetic emblems of youth and beauty fleeting as
the summer flowers. Such fables contain a deeper philosophy of the relation of
the life of man to the life of naturea sad philosophy which gave birth to a
tragic practice. What that philosophy and that practice were, we shall learn
later on.
3. Recapitulation
We can now perhaps understand why the ancients identified Hippolytus, the
consort of Artemis, with Virbius, who, according to Servius, stood to Diana as
Adonis to Venus, or Attis to the Mother of the Gods. For Diana, like Artemis,
was a goddess of fertility in general, and of childbirth in particular. As
such she, like her Greek counterpart, needed a male partner. That partner, if
Servius is right, was Virbius. In his character of the founder of the sacred
grove and first king of Nemi, Virbius is clearly the mythical predecessor or
archetype of the line of priests who served Diana under the title of Kings of
the Wood, and who came, like him, one after the other, to a violent end. It is
natural, therefore, to conjecture that they stood to the goddess of the grove
in the same relation in which Virbius stood to her; in short, that the mortal
King of the Wood had for his queen the woodland Diana herself. If the sacred
tree which he guarded with his life was supposed, as seems probable, to be her
special embodiment, her priest may not only have worshipped it as his goddess
but embraced it as his wife. There is at least nothing absurd in the
supposition, since even in the time of Pliny a noble Roman used thus to treat
a beautiful beech-tree in another sacred grove of Diana on the Alban hills. He
embraced it, he kissed it, he lay under its shadow, he poured wine on its
trunk. Apparently he took the tree for the goddess. The custom of physically
marrying men and women to trees is still practised in India and other parts of
the East. Why should it not have obtained in ancient Latium?
Reviewing the evidence as a whole, we may conclude that the worship of
Diana in her sacred grove at Nemi was of great importance and immemorial
antiquity; that she was revered as the goddess of woodlands and of wild
creatures, probably also of domestic cattle and of the fruits of the earth;
that she was believed to bless men and women with offspring and to aid mothers
in childbed; that her holy fire, tended by chaste virgins, burned perpetually
in a round temple within the precinct; that associated with her was a
water-nymph Egeria who discharged one of Diana's own functions by succouring
women in travail, and who was popularly supposed to have mated with an old
Roman king in the sacred grove; further, that Diana of the Wood herself had a
male companion Virbius by name, who was to her what Adonis was to Venus, or
Attis to Cybele; and, lastly, that this mythical Virbius was represented in
historical times by a line of priests known as Kings of the Wood, who
regularly perished by the swords of their successors, and whose lives were in
a manner bound up with a certain tree in the grove, because so long as that
tree was uninjured they were safe from attack.
Clearly these conclusions do not of themselves suffice to explain the
peculiar rule of succession to the priesthood. But perhaps the survey of a
wider field may lead us to think that they contain in germ the solution of the
problem. To that wider survey we must now address ourselves. It will be long
and laborious, but may possess something of the interest and charm of a voyage
of discovery, in which we shall visit many strange foreign lands, with strange
foreign peoples, and still stranger customs. The wind is in the shrouds: we
shake out our sails to it, and leave the coast of Italy behind us for a time.
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