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Diana[a]
is a goddess in Roman and Hellenistic religion, primarily considered a
patroness of the countryside, hunters, crossroads, and the Moon. She is
equated with the Greek goddess Artemis, and absorbed much of Artemis'
mythology early in Roman history, including a birth on the island of
Delos to parents Jupiter and Latona, and a twin brother, Apollo, though
she had an independent origin in Italy.
Diana by Renato Torres
(Portalegre), is one of the best and most representative tapestries of
the European and Portuguese tapestries of the 20th century.
Diana is
considered a virgin goddess and protector of childbirth. Historically,
Diana made up a triad with two other Roman deities: Egeria the water
nymph, her servant and assistant midwife; and Virbius, the woodland god.
Diana
is revered in modern neopagan religions including Roman neopaganism,
Stregheria, and Wicca. In the ancient, medieval, and modern periods,
Diana has been considered a triple deity, merged with a goddess of the
moon (Luna/Selene) and the underworld (usually Hecate).
The name
Dīāna probably derives from Latin dīus ('godly'), ultimately from
Proto-Italic *divios (/diwios/), meaning 'divine, heavenly'. It stems
from Proto-Indo-European *diwyós ('divine, heavenly'), formed with the
stem *dyew- ('daylight sky') attached the thematic suffix -yós.[8][9]
Cognates appear in Myceanean Greek di-wi-ja, in Ancient Greek dîos
(δῖος; 'belonging to heaven, godlike'), and in Sanskrit divyá
('heavenly' or 'celestial').
The ancient Latin writers Varro and
Cicero considered the etymology of Dīāna as allied to that of dies and
connected to the shine of the Moon, noting that one of her titles is
Diana Lucifera ("light-bearer").
... people regard Diana and the
moon as one and the same. ... the moon (luna) is so called from the verb
to shine (lucere). Lucina is identified with it, which is why in our
country they invoke Juno Lucina in childbirth, just as the Greeks call
on Diana the Light-bearer. Diana also has the name Omnivaga ("wandering
everywhere"), not because of her hunting but because she is numbered as
one of the seven planets; her name Diana derives from the fact that she
turns darkness into daylight (dies). She is invoked at childbirth
because children are born occasionally after seven, or usually after
nine, lunar revolutions ...
--Quintus Lucilius Balbus as
recorded by Marcus Tullius Cicero and translated by P.G. Walsh. De
Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods), Book II, Part ii, Section c
Description
As a goddess of the countryside
Diana Hunting, Guillaume Seignac
The
persona of Diana is complex, and contains a number of archaic features.
Diana was originally considered to be a goddess of the wilderness and
of the hunt, a central sport in both Roman and Greek culture. Early
Roman inscriptions to Diana celebrated her primarily as a huntress and
patron of hunters. Later, in the Hellenistic period, Diana came to be
equally or more revered as a goddess not of the wild woodland but of the
"tame" countryside, or villa rustica, the idealization of which was
common in Greek thought and poetry. This dual role as goddess of both
civilization and the wild, and therefore the civilized countryside,
first applied to the Greek goddess Artemis (for example, in the 3rd
century BCE poetry of Anacreon). By the 3rd century CE, after Greek
influence had a profound impact on Roman religion, Diana had been almost
fully combined with Artemis and took on many of her attributes, both in
her spiritual domains and in the description of her appearance. The
Roman poet Nemesianus wrote a typical description of Diana: She carried a
bow and a quiver full of golden arrows, wore a golden cloak, purple
half-boots, and a belt with a jeweled buckle to hold her tunic together,
and wore her hair gathered in a ribbon. By the 5th century CE, almost a
millennia after her cult's entry into Rome, the philosopher Proclus
could still characterize Diana as "the inspective guardian of every
thing rural, [who] represses every thing rustic and uncultivated."
As a triple goddess
Diana
was often considered an aspect of a triple goddess, known as Diana
triformis: Diana, Luna, and Hecate. According to historian C.M. Green,
"these were neither different goddesses nor an amalgamation of different
goddesses. They were Diana...Diana as huntress, Diana as the moon,
Diana of the underworld." At her sacred grove on the shores of Lake
Nemi, Diana was venerated as a triple goddess beginning in the late 6th
century BCE.
Two examples of a 1st-century BCE denarius (RRC 486/1) depicting the head of Diana Nemorensis and her triple cult statue
Andreas
Alföldi interpreted an image on a late Republican coin as the Latin
Diana "conceived as a threefold unity of the divine huntress, the Moon
goddess and the goddess of the nether world, Hekate". This coin, minted
by P. Accoleius Lariscolus in 43 BCE, has been acknowledged as
representing an archaic statue of Diana Nemorensis. It represents
Artemis with the bow at one extremity, Luna-Selene with flowers at the
other and a central deity not immediately identifiable, all united by a
horizontal bar. The iconographical analysis allows the dating of this
image to the 6th century at which time there are Etruscan models. The
coin shows that the triple goddess cult image still stood in the lucus
of Nemi in 43 BCE. Lake Nemi was called Triviae lacus by Virgil (Aeneid
7.516), while Horace called Diana montium custos nemoremque virgo
("keeper of the mountains and virgin of Nemi") and diva triformis
("three-form goddess").
Two heads found in the sanctuary and the
Roman theatre at Nemi, which have a hollow on their back, lend support
to this interpretation of an archaic triple Diana.
As goddess of crossroads and the underworld
The
earliest epithet of Diana was Trivia, and she was addressed with that
title by Virgil, Catullus, and many others. "Trivia" comes from the
Latin trivium, "triple way", and refers to Diana's guardianship over
roadways, particularly Y-junctions or three-way crossroads. This role
carried a somewhat dark and dangerous connotation, as it metaphorically
pointed the way to the underworld. In the 1st-century CE play Medea,
Seneca's titular sorceress calls on Trivia to cast a magic spell. She
evokes the triple goddess of Diana, Selene, and Hecate, and specifies
that she requires the powers of the latter. The 1st century poet Horace
similarly wrote of a magic incantation invoking the power of both Diana
and Proserpina. The symbol of the crossroads is relevant to several
aspects of Diana's domain. It can symbolize the paths hunters may
encounter in the forest, lit only by the full moon; this symbolizes
making choices "in the dark" without the light of guidance.
Diana's
role as a goddess of the underworld, or at least of ushering people
between life and death, caused her early on to be conflated with Hecate
(and occasionally also with Proserpina). However, her role as an
underworld goddess appears to pre-date strong Greek influence (though
the early Greek colony of Cumae had a cult of Hekate and certainly had
contacts with the Latins). A theater in her sanctuary at Lake Nemi
included a pit and tunnel that would have allowed actors to easily
descend on one side of the stage and ascend on the other, indicating a
connection between the phases of the moon and a descent by the moon
goddess into the underworld. It is likely that her underworld aspect in
her original Latin worship did not have a distinct name, like Luna was
for her moon aspect. This is due to a seeming reluctance or taboo by the
early Latins to name underworld deities, and the fact that they
believed the underworld to be silent, precluding naming. Hekate, a Greek
goddess also associated with the boundary between the earth and the
underworld, became attached to Diana as a name for her underworld aspect
following Greek influence.
As goddess of childbirth
Diana was
often considered to be a goddess associated with fertility and
childbirth, and the protection of women during labor. This probably
arose as an extension of her association with the moon, whose cycles
were believed to parallel the menstrual cycle, and which was used to
track the months during pregnancy. At her shrine in Aricia, worshipers
left votive terracotta offerings for the goddess in the shapes of babies
and wombs, and the temple there also offered care of pups and pregnant
dogs. This care of infants also extended to the training of both young
people and dogs, especially for hunting. In her role as a protector of
childbirth, Diana was called Diana Lucina, Diana Lucifera or even Juno
Lucina, because her domain overlapped with that of the goddess Juno. The
title of Juno may also have had an independent origin as it applied to
Diana, with the literal meaning of "helper" - Diana as Juno Lucina would
be the "helper of childbirth".
As a "frame god"
Diana as Personification of the Night. Anton Raphael Mengs, c. 1765.
According
to a theory proposed by Georges Dumézil, Diana falls into a particular
subset of celestial gods, referred to in histories of religion as frame
gods. Such gods, while keeping the original features of celestial
divinities (i.e. transcendent heavenly power and abstention from direct
rule in worldly matters), did not share the fate of other celestial gods
in Indoeuropean religions - that of becoming dei otiosi, or gods
without practical purpose, since they did retain a particular sort of
influence over the world and mankind. The celestial character of Diana
is reflected in her connection with inaccessibility, virginity, light,
and her preference for dwelling on high mountains and in sacred woods.
Diana, therefore, reflects the heavenly world in its sovereignty,
supremacy, impassibility, and indifference towards such secular matters
as the fates of mortals and states. At the same time, however, she is
seen as active in ensuring the succession of kings and in the
preservation of humankind through the protection of childbirth.[27]
These functions are apparent in the traditional institutions and cults
related to the goddess:
The legend of the rex Nemorensis, Diana's
sacerdos (priest) in the Arician wood, who held the position until
someone else challenged and killed him in a duel, after breaking a
branch from a certain tree of the wood. This ever open succession
reveals the character and mission of the goddess as a guarantor of
kingly status through successive generations. Her function as bestower
of authority to rule is also attested in the story related by Livy in
which a Sabine man who sacrifices a heifer to Diana wins for his country
the seat of the Roman empire.
Diana was also worshiped by women
who wanted to be pregnant or who, once pregnant, prayed for an easy
delivery. This form of worship is attested in archaeological finds of
votive statuettes in her sanctuary in the nemus Aricinum as well as in
ancient sources, e.g. Ovid.
According to Dumezil, the forerunner of
all frame gods is an Indian epic hero who was the image (avatar) of the
Vedic god Dyaus. Having renounced the world, in his roles of father and
king, he attained the status of an immortal being while retaining the
duty of ensuring that his dynasty is preserved and that there is always a
new king for each generation. The Scandinavian god Heimdallr performs
an analogous function: he is born first and will die last. He too gives
origin to kingship and the first king, bestowing on him regal
prerogatives. Diana, although a female deity, has exactly the same
functions, preserving mankind through childbirth and royal succession.
F. H. Pairault, in her essay on Diana, qualified Dumézil's theory as "impossible to verify".
Mythology
Mosaic depicting Diana and her nymph surprised by Actaeon. Ruins of Volubilis, 2nd century CE.
Unlike
the Greek gods, Roman gods were originally considered to be numina:
divine powers of presence and will that did not necessarily have
physical form. At the time Rome was founded, Diana and the other major
Roman gods probably did not have much mythology per se, or any
depictions in human form. The idea of gods as having anthropomorphic
qualities and human-like personalities and actions developed later,
under the influence of Greek and Etruscan religion.
By the 3rd
century BCE, Diana is found listed among the twelve major gods of the
Roman pantheon by the poet Ennius. Though the Capitoline Triad were the
primary state gods of Rome, early Roman myth did not assign a strict
hierarchy to the gods the way Greek mythology did, though the Greek
hierarchy would eventually be adopted by Roman religion as well.
Once
Greek influence had caused Diana to be considered identical to the
Greek goddess Artemis, Diana acquired Artemis's physical description,
attributes, and variants of her myths as well. Like Artemis, Diana is
usually depicted in art wearing a women’s chiton, shortened in the
kolpos style to facilitate mobility during hunting, with a hunting bow
and quiver, and often accompanied by hunting dogs. A 1st-century BCE
Roman coin (see above) depicted her with a unique, short hairstyle, and
in triple form, with one form holding a bow and another holding a poppy.
Family
When
worship of Apollo was first introduced to Rome, Diana became conflated
with Apollo's sister Artemis as in the earlier Greek myths, and as such
she became identified as the daughter of Apollo's parents Latona and
Jupiter. Though Diana was usually considered to be a virgin goddess like
Artemis, later authors sometimes attributed consorts and children to
her. According to Cicero and Ennius, Trivia (an epithet of Diana) and
Caelus were the parents of Janus, as well as of Saturn and Ops.
According
to Macrobius (who cited Nigidius Figulus and Cicero), Janus and Jana
(Diana) are a pair of divinities, worshiped as the sun and moon. Janus
was said to receive sacrifices before all the others because, through
him, the way of access to the desired deity is made apparent.
Myth of Actaeon
Diana's
mythology incorporated stories which were variants of earlier stories
about Artemis. Possibly the most well-known of these is the myth of
Actaeon. In Ovid's version of this myth, part of his poem Metamorphoses,
he tells of a pool or grotto hidden in the wooded valley of Gargaphie.
There, Diana, the goddess of the woods, would bathe and rest after a
hunt. Actaeon, a young hunter, stumbled across the grotto and
accidentally witnessed the goddess bathing without invitation. In
retaliation, Diana splashed him with water from the pool, cursing him,
and he transformed into a deer. His own hunting dogs caught his scent,
and tore him apart.
Ovid's version of the myth of Actaeon differs
from most earlier sources. Unlike earlier myths about Artemis, Actaeon
is killed for an innocent mistake, glimpsing Diana bathing. An earlier
variant of this myth, known as the Bath of Pallas, had the hunter
intentionally spy on the bathing goddess Pallas (Athena), and earlier
versions of the myth involving Artemis did not involve the bath at all.
Worship in the classical period
An
ancient Fourth-Pompeian-Style Roman wall painting depicting a scene of
sacrifice in honor of the goddess Diana; she is seen here accompanied by
a deer. The fresco was discovered in the triclinium of House of the
Vettii in Pompeii, Italy.
Diana was an ancient goddess common to all
Latin tribes. Therefore, many sanctuaries were dedicated to her in the
lands inhabited by Latins. Her primary sanctuary was a woodland grove
overlooking Lake Nemi, a body of water also known as "Diana's Mirror",
where she was worshiped as Diana Nemorensis, or "Diana of the Wood". In
Rome, the cult of Diana may have been almost as old as the city itself.
Varro mentions her in the list of deities to whom king Titus Tatius
promised to build a shrine. His list included Luna and Diana Lucina as
separate entities. Another testimony to the antiquity of her cult is to
be found in the lex regia of King Tullus Hostilius that condemns those
guilty of incest to the sacratio to Diana. She had a temple in Rome on
the Aventine Hill, according to tradition dedicated by king Servius
Tullius. Its location is remarkable as the Aventine is situated outside
the pomerium, i.e. original territory of the city, in order to comply
with the tradition that Diana was a goddess common to all Latins and not
exclusively of the Romans. 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.
Other known sanctuaries
and temples to Diana include Colle di Corne near Tusculum, where she is
referred to with the archaic Latin name of deva Cornisca and where
existed a collegium of worshippers; at Évora, Portugal; Mount Algidus,
also near Tusculum; at Lavinium; and at Tibur (Tivoli), where she is
referred to as Diana Opifera Nemorensis. Diana was also worshiped at a
sacred wood mentioned by Livy - ad compitum Anagninum (near Anagni), and
on Mount Tifata in Campania.
According to Plutarch, men and women
alike were worshipers of Diana and were welcomed into all of her
temples. The one exception seems to have been a temple on the Vicus
Patricius, which men either did not enter due to tradition, or were not
allowed to enter. Plutarch related a legend that a man had attempted to
assault a woman worshiping in this temple and was killed by a pack of
dogs (echoing the myth of Diana and Actaeon), which resulted in a
superstition against men entering the temple.
A feature common to
nearly all of Diana's temples and shrines by the second century AD was
the hanging up of stag antlers. Plutarch noted that the only exception
to this was the temple on the Aventine Hill, in which bull horns had
been hung up instead. Plutarch explains this by way of reference to a
legend surrounding the sacrifice of an impressive Sabine bull by King
Servius at the founding of the Aventine temple.
Sanctuary at Lake Nemi
Main article: Diana Nemorensis
An 18th-century depiction of Lake Nemi as painted by John Robert Cozens
Diana's
worship may have originated at an open-air sanctuary overlooking Lake
Nemi in the Alban Hills near Aricia, where she was worshiped as Diana
Nemorensis, or ("Diana of the Sylvan Glade"). According to legendary
accounts, the sanctuary was founded by Orestes and Iphigenia after they
fled from the Tauri. In this tradition, the Nemi sanctuary was
supposedly built on the pattern of an earlier Temple of Artemis
Tauropolos, and the first cult statue at Nemi was said to have been
stolen from the Tauri and brought to Nemi by Orestes. Historical
evidence suggests that worship of Diana at Nemi flourished from at least
the 6th century BCE until the 2nd century CE. Her cult there was first
attested in Latin literature by Cato the Elder, in a surviving quote by
the late grammarian Priscian. By the 4th century BCE, the simple shrine
at Nemi had been joined by a temple complex. The sanctuary served an
important political role as it was held in common by the Latin League.
A
festival to Diana, the Nemoralia, was held yearly at Nemi on the Ides
of August (August 13–15). Worshipers traveled to Nemi carrying torches
and garlands, and once at the lake, they left pieces of thread tied to
fences and tablets inscribed with prayers.[50][51] Diana's festival
eventually became widely celebrated throughout Italy, which was unusual
given the provincial nature of Diana's cult. The poet Statius wrote of
the festival:
"It is the season when the most scorching region of
the heavens takes over the land and the keen dog-star Sirius, so often
struck by Hyperion's sun, burns the gasping fields. Now is the day when
Trivia's Arician grove, convenient for fugitive kings, grows smoky, and
the lake, having guilty knowledge of Hippolytus, glitters with the
reflection of a multitude of torches; Diana herself garlands the
deserving hunting dogs and polishes the arrowheads and allows the wild
animals to go in safety, and at virtuous hearths all Italy celebrates
the Hecatean Ides." (Statius Silv. 3.I.52-60)
Statius describes the
triple nature of the goddess by invoking heavenly (the stars), earthly
(the grove itself) and underworld (Hecate) imagery. He also suggests by
the garlanding of the dogs and polishing of the spears that no hunting
was allowed during the festival.
Legend has it that Diana's high
priest at Nemi, known as the Rex Nemorensis, was always an escaped slave
who could only obtain the position by defeating his predecessor in a
fight to the death. Sir James George Frazer wrote of this sacred grove
in The Golden Bough, basing his interpretation on brief remarks in
Strabo (5.3.12), Pausanias (2,27.24) and Servius' commentary on the
Aeneid (6.136). The legend tells of a tree that stood in the center of
the grove and was heavily guarded. No one was allowed to break off its
limbs, with the exception of a runaway slave, who was allowed, if he
could, to break off one of the boughs. He was then in turn granted the
privilege to engage the Rex Nemorensis, the current king and priest of
Diana, in a fight to the death. If the slave prevailed, he became the
next king for as long as he could defeat his challengers. However,
Joseph Fontenrose criticised Frazer's assumption that a rite of this
sort actually occurred at the sanctuary, and no contemporary records
exist that support the historical existence of the Rex Nemorensis.
Spread and conflation with Artemis
A Roman fresco depicting Diana hunting, 4th century AD, from the Via Livenza hypogeum in Rome.
Rome
hoped to unify into and control the Latin tribes around Nemi, so
Diana's worship was imported to Rome as a show of political solidarity.
Diana soon afterwards became Hellenized, and combined with the Greek
goddess Artemis, "a process which culminated with the appearance of
Diana beside Apollo [the brother of Artemis] in the first lectisternium
at Rome" in 399 BCE.[54] The process of identification between the two
goddesses probably began when artists who were commissioned to create
new cult statues for Diana's temples outside Nemi were struck by the
similar attributes between Diana and the more familiar Artemis, and
sculpted Diana in a manner inspired by previous depictions of Artemis.
Sibyllene influence and trade with Massilia, where similar cult statues
of Artemis existed, would have completed the process.
According to
Françoise Hélène Pairault's study, historical and archaeological
evidence point to the fact that the characteristics given to both Diana
of the Aventine Hill and Diana Nemorensis were the product of the direct
or indirect influence of the cult of Artemis, which was spread by the
Phoceans among the Greek towns of Campania Cuma and Capua, who in turn
had passed it over to the Etruscans and the Latins by the 6th and 5th
centuries BCE.
Evidence suggests that a confrontation occurred
between two groups of Etruscans who fought for supremacy, those from
Tarquinia, Vulci and Caere (allied with the Greeks of Capua) and those
of Clusium. This is reflected in the legend of the coming of Orestes to
Nemi and of the inhumation of his bones in the Roman Forum near the
temple of Saturn. The cult introduced by Orestes at Nemi is apparently
that of the Artemis Tauropolos. The literary amplification reveals a
confused religious background: different versions of Artemis were
conflated under the epithet. As far as Nemi's Diana is concerned there
are two different versions, by Strabo and Servius Honoratus. Strabo's
version looks to be the most authoritative as he had access to
first-hand primary sources on the sanctuaries of Artemis, i.e. the
priest of Artemis Artemidoros of Ephesus. The meaning of Tauropolos
denotes an Asiatic goddess with lunar attributes, lady of the herds. The
only possible interpretatio graeca of high antiquity concerning Diana
Nemorensis could have been the one based on this ancient aspect of a
deity of light, master of wildlife. Tauropolos is an ancient epithet
attached to Artemis, Hecate, and even Athena. According to the legend
Orestes founded Nemi together with Iphigenia. At Cuma the Sybil is the
priestess of both Phoibos and Trivia. Hesiod and Stesichorus tell the
story according to which after her death Iphigenia was divinised under
the name of Hecate, a fact which would support the assumption that
Artemis Tauropolos had a real ancient alliance with the heroine, who was
her priestess in Taurid and her human paragon. This religious complex
is in turn supported by the triple statue of Artemis-Hecate.
In Rome,
Diana was regarded with great reverence and was a patroness of
lower-class citizens, called plebeians, as well as slaves, who could
receive asylum in her temples. Georg Wissowa proposed that this might be
because the first slaves of the Romans were Latins of the neighboring
tribes. However, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus had the same custom of
the asylum.
In Rome
Diana of Versailles, a 2nd-century Roman version in the Greek tradition of iconography (Louvre Museum, Paris).
Worship
of Diana probably spread into the city of Rome beginning around 550
BCE, during her Hellenization and combination with the Greek goddess
Artemis. Diana was first worshiped along with her brother and mother,
Apollo and Latona, in their temple in the Campus Martius, and later in
the Temple of Apollo Palatinus.
The first major temple dedicated
primarily to Diana in the vicinity of Rome was the Temple of Diana
Aventina (Diana of the Aventine Hill). According to the Roman historian
Livy, the construction of this temple began in the 6th century BCE and
was inspired by stories of the massive Temple of Artemis at Ephesus,
which was said to have been built through the combined efforts of all
the cities of Asia Minor. Legend has it that Servius Tullius was
impressed with this act of massive political and economic cooperation,
and convinced the cities of the Latin League to work with the Romans to
build their own temple to the goddess. However, there is no compelling
evidence for such an early construction of the temple, and it is more
likely that it was built in the 3rd century BCE, following the influence
of the temple at Nemi, and probably about the same time the first
temples to Vertumnus (who was associated with Diana) were built in Rome
(264 BCE). The misconception that the Aventine Temple was inspired by
the Ephesian Temple might originate in the fact that the cult images and
statues used at the former were based heavily on those found in the
latter. Whatever its initial construction date, records show that the
Avantine Temple was rebuilt by Lucius Cornificius in 32 BCE. If it was
still in use by the 4th century CE, the Aventine temple would have been
permanently closed during the persecution of pagans in the late Roman
Empire. Today, a short street named the Via del Tempio di Diana and an
associated plaza, Piazza del Tempio di Diana, commemorates the site of
the temple. Part of its wall is located within one of the halls of the
Apuleius restaurant.
Later temple dedications often were based on the
model for ritual formulas and regulations of the Temple of Diana.[69]
Roman politicians built several minor temples to Diana elsewhere in Rome
to secure public support. One of these was built in the Campus Martius
in 187 BCE; no Imperial period records of this temple have been found,
and it is possible it was one of the temples demolished around 55 BCE in
order to build a theater. Diana also had a public temple on the
Quirinal Hill, the sanctuary of Diana Planciana. It was dedicated by
Plancius in 55 BCE, though it is unclear which Plancius.
In their
worship of Artemis, Greeks filled their temples with sculptures of the
goddess created by well-known sculptors, and many were adapted for use
in the worship of Diana by the Romans, beginning around the 2nd century
BCE (the beginning of a period of strong Hellenistic influence on Roman
religion). The earliest depictions of the Artemis of Ephesus are found
on Ephesian coins from this period. By the Imperial period, small marble
statues of the Ephesian Artemis were being produced in the Western
region of the Mediterranean and were often bought by Roman patrons.[70]
The Romans obtained a large copy of an Ephesian Artemis statue for their
temple on the Aventine Hill. Diana was usually depicted for educated
Romans in her Greek guise. If she was shown accompanied by a deer, as in
the Diana of Versailles, this is because Diana was the patroness of
hunting. The deer may also offer a covert reference to the myth of
Acteon (or Actaeon), who saw her bathing naked. Diana transformed Acteon
into a stag and set his own hunting dogs to kill him.
At Mount Tifata
Diana and her hound, c.1720
In
Campania, Diana had a major temple at Mount Tifata, near Capua. She was
worshiped there as Diana Tifatina. This was one of the oldest
sanctuaries in Campania. As a rural sanctuary, it included lands and
estates that would have been worked by slaves following the Roman
conquest of Campania, and records show that expansion and renovation
projects at her temple were funded in part by other conquests by Roman
military campaigns. The modern Christian church of Sant'Angelo in Formis
was built on the ruins of the Tifata temple.
Roman provinces
In
the Roman provinces, Diana was widely worshiped alongside local deities.
Over 100 inscriptions to Diana have been cataloged in the provinces,
mainly from Gaul, Upper Germania, and Britannia. Diana was commonly
invoked alongside another forest god, Silvanus, as well as other
"mountain gods". In the provinces, she was occasionally conflated with
local goddesses such as Abnoba, and was given high status, with Augusta
and regina ("queen") being common epithets.
Household worship
Diana
was not only regarded as a goddess of the wilderness and the hunt, but
was often worshiped as a patroness of families. She served a similar
function to the hearth goddess Vesta, and was sometimes considered to be
a member of the Penates, the deities most often invoked in household
rituals. In this role, she was often given a name reflecting the tribe
of family who worshiped her and asked for her protection. For example,
in what is now Wiesbaden, Diana was worshiped as Diana Mattiaca by the
Mattiaci tribe. Other family-derived named attested in the ancient
literature include Diana Cariciana, Diana Valeriana, and Diana Plancia.
As a house goddess, Diana often became reduced in stature compared to
her official worship by the Roman state religion. In personal or family
worship, Diana was brought to the level of other household spirits, and
was believed to have a vested interest in the prosperity of the
household and the continuation of the family. The Roman poet Horace
regarded Diana as a household goddess in his Odes, and had an altar
dedicated to her in his villa where household worship could be
conducted. In his poetry, Horace deliberately contrasted the kinds of
grand, elevated hymns to Diana on behalf of the entire Roman state, the
kind of worship that would have been typical at her Aventine temple,
with a more personal form of devotion.
Images of Diana and her
associated myths have been found on sarcophagi of wealthy Romans. They
often included scenes depicting sacrifices to the goddess, and on at
least one example, the deceased man is shown joining Diana's hunt.
Theology
Since
ancient times, philosophers and theologians have examined the nature of
Diana in light of her worship traditions, attributes, mythology, and
identification with other gods.
Conflation with other goddesses
Wooden statue of Diana Abnoba, Museum for Prehistory in Thuringia
Diana
was initially a hunting goddess and goddess of the local woodland at
Nemi, but as her worship spread, she acquired attributes of other
similar goddesses. As she became conflated with Artemis, she became a
moon goddess, identified with the other lunar goddesses goddess Luna and
Hekate. She also became the goddess of childbirth and ruled over the
countryside. Catullus wrote a poem to Diana in which she has more than
one alias: Latonia, Lucina, Juno, Trivia, Luna.
Along with Mars,
Diana was often venerated at games held in Roman amphitheaters, and some
inscriptions from the Danubian provinces show that she was conflated
with Nemesis in this role, as Diana Nemesis.
Outside of Italy, Diana
had important centers of worship where she was syncretised with similar
local deities in Gaul, Upper Germania, and Britannia. Diana was
particularly important in the region in and around the Black Forest,
where she was conflated with the local goddess Abnoba and worshiped as
Diana Abnoba.
Some late antique sources went even further,
syncretizing many local "great goddesses" into a single "Queen of
Heaven". The Platonist philosopher Apuleius, writing in the late 2nd
century, depicted the goddess declaring:
"I come, Lucius, moved
by your entreaties: I, mother of the universe, mistress of all the
elements, first-born of the ages, highest of the gods, queen of the
shades, first of those who dwell in heaven, representing in one shape
all gods and goddesses. My will controls the shining heights of heaven,
the health-giving sea-winds, and the mournful silences of hell; the
entire world worships my single godhead in a thousand shapes, with
divers rites, and under many a different name. The Phrygians, first-born
of mankind, call me the Pessinuntian Mother of the gods; the native
Athenians the Cecropian Minerva; the island-dwelling Cypriots Paphian
Venus; the archer Cretans Dictynnan Diana; the triple-tongued Sicilians
Stygian Proserpine; the ancient Eleusinians Actaean Ceres; some call me
Juno, some Bellona, others Hecate, others Rhamnusia; but both races of
Ethiopians, those on whom the rising and those on whom the setting sun
shines, and the Egyptians who excel in ancient learning, honour me with
the worship which is truly mine and call me by my true name: Queen
Isis."
--Apuleius, translated by E. J. Kenny. The Golden Ass
Later
poets and historians looked to Diana's identity as a triple goddess to
merge her with triads heavenly, earthly, and underworld (cthonic)
goddesses. Maurus Servius Honoratus said that the same goddess was
called Luna in heaven, Diana on earth, and Proserpina in hell.[4]
Michael Drayton praises the Triple Diana in poem The Man in the Moone
(1606): "So these great three most powerful of the rest, Phoebe, Diana,
Hecate, do tell. Her sovereignty in Heaven, in Earth and Hell".
In Platonism
Based
on the earlier writings of Plato, the Neoplatonist philosophers of late
antiquity united the various major gods of Hellenic tradition into a
series of monads containing within them triads, with some creating the
world, some animating it or bringing it to life, and others harmonizing
it. Within this system, Proclus considered Diana to be one of the
primary animating, or life-giving, deities. Proclus, citing Orphic
tradition, concludes that Diana "presides over all the generation in
nature, and is the midwife of physical productive principles" and that
she "extends these genitals, distributing as far as to subterranean
natures the prolific power of [Bacchus]." Specifically, Proclus
considered the life-generating principle of the highest order, within
the Intellectual realm, to be Rhea, whom he identified with Ceres.
Within her divinity was produced the cause of the basic principle of
life. Projecting this principle into the lower, Hypercosmic realm of
reality generated a lower monad, Kore, who could therefore be understood
as Ceres' "daughter". Kore embodied the "maidenly" principle of
generation that, more importantly, included a principle of division -
where Demeter generates life indiscriminately, Kore distributes it
individually. This division results in another triad or trinity, known
as the Maidenly trinity, within the monad of Kore: namely, Diana,
Proserpine, and Minerva, through whom individual living beings are given
life and perfected. Specifically, according to a commentary by scholar
Spyridon Rangos, Diana (equated with Hecate) gives existence, Proserpine
(equated with "Soul") gives form, and Minerva (equated with "Virtue")
gives intellect.
In his commentary on Proclus, the 19th century
Platonist scholar Thomas Taylor expanded upon the theology of the
classical philosophers, further interpreting the nature and roles of the
gods in light of the whole body of Neoplatonist philosophy. He cites
Plato in giving a three-form aspect to her central characteristic of
virginity: the undefiled, the mundane, and the anagogic. Through the
first form, Diana is regarded as a "lover of virginity". Through the
second, she is the guardian of virtue. Through the third, she is
considered to "hate the impulses arising from generation." Through the
principle of the undefiled, Taylor suggests that she is given supremacy
in Proclus' triad of life-giving or animating deities, and in this role
the theurgists called her Hekate. In this role, Diana is granted
undefiled power (Amilieti) from the other gods. This generative power
does not proceed forth from the goddess (according to a statement by the
Oracle of Delphi) but rather resides with her, giving her unparalleled
virtue, and in this way she can be said to embody virginity. Later
commentators on Proclus have clarified that the virginity of Diana is
not an absence of sexual drive, but a renunciation of sexuality. Diana
embodies virginity because she generates but precedes active fertility
(within Neoplatonism, an important maxim is that "every productive cause
is superior to the nature of the produced effect").
Using the
ancient Neoplatonists as a basis, Taylor also commented on the triadic
nature of Diana and related goddesses, and the ways in which they
subsist within one another, partaking unevenly in each other's powers
and attributes. For example, Kore is said to embody both Diana/Hecate
and Minerva, who create the virtuous or virgin power within her, but
also Proserpine (her sole traditional identification), through whom the
generative power of the Kore as a whole is able to proceed forth into
the world, where it joins with the demiurge to produce further deities,
including Bacchus and "nine azure-eyed, flower-producing daughters".
Proclus also included Artemis/Diana in a second triad of deities, along with Ceres and Juno. According to Proclus:
"The life-generating triad begins with Demeter who engenders the entire
encosmic life, namely intellectual life, psychic life and the life that
is inseparable from body; Hera who brings forth the birth of soul
occupies the cohering middle position (for the intellectual goddess
outpours from herself all the processions of the psychic kinds);
finally, Artemis has been assigned to the end of the trinity because she
activates all the natural formative principles and perfects the
self-completeness of matter; it is for this reason, namely because she
supervises natural development and natural birth, that the theologians
and Socrates in the Theaetetus call her Lochia."
Proclus pointed to
the conflict between Hera and Artemis in the Illiad as a representation
of the two kinds of human souls. Where Hera creates the higher, more
cultured, or "worthy" souls, Artemis brings light to and perfects the
"less worthy" or less rational. As explained by Ragnos (2000), "The
aspect of reality which Artemis and Hera share, and because of which
they engage in a symbolic conflict, is the engendering of life." Hera
elevates rational living beings up to intellectual rational existence,
whereas Artemis's power pertains to human life as far as its physical
existence as a living thing. "Artemis deals with the most elementary
forms of life or the most elementary part of all life, whereas Hera
operates in the most elevated forms of life or the most elevated part of
all life.
Worship in Post Roman Europe
Gallo-Roman bronze statuette of Diana (latter 1st century)
Sermons
and other religious documents have provided evidence for the worship of
Diana during the Middle Ages. Though few details have been recorded,
enough references to Diana worship during the early Christian period
exist to give some indication that it may have been relatively
widespread among remote and rural communities throughout Europe, and
that such beliefs persisted into the Merovingian period. References to
contemporary Diana worship exist from the 6th century on the Iberian
peninsula and what is now southern France, though more detailed accounts
of Dianic cults were given for the Low Countries, and southern Belgium
in particular. Many of these were probably local goddesses, and wood
nymphs or dryads, which had been conflated with Diana by Christian
writers Latinizing local names and traditions.
In the Low Countries
The
6th century bishop Gregory of Tours reported meeting with a deacon
named Vulfilaic (also known as Saint Wulflaicus or Walfroy the Stylite),
who founded a hermitage on a hill in what is now Margut, France. On the
same hill, he found "an image of Diana which the unbelieving people
worshiped as a god." According to Gregory's report, worshipers would
also sing chants in Diana's honor as they drank and feasted. Vulfilaic
destroyed a number of smaller pagan statues in the area, but the statue
of Diana was too large. After converting some of the local population to
Christianity, Vulfilaic and a group of local residents attempted to
pull the large statue down the mountain in order to destroy it, but
failed, as it was too large to be moved. In Vulfilaic's account, after
praying for a miracle, he was then able to single-handedly pull down the
statue, at which point he and his group smashed it to dust with their
hammers. According to Vulfilaic, this incident was quickly followed by
an outbreak of pimples or sores that covered his entire body, which he
attributed to demonic activity and similarly cured via what he described
as a miracle. Vulfilaic would later found a church on the site, which
is today known as Mont Saint-Walfroy.
Additional evidence for
surviving pagan practices in the Low Countries region comes from the
Vita Eligii, or "Life of Saint Eligius", written by Audoin in the 7th
century. Audoin drew together the familiar admonitions of Eligius to the
people of Flanders. In his sermons, he denounced "pagan customs" that
the people continued to follow. In particular, he denounced several
Roman gods and goddesses alongside Druidic mythological beliefs and
objects:
"I denounce and contest, that you shall observe no
sacrilegious pagan customs. For no cause or infirmity should you consult
magicians, diviners, sorcerers or incantators. ..Do not observe
auguries ... No influence attaches to the first work of the day or the
[phase of the] moon. ... [Do not] make vetulas, little deer or iotticos
or set tables at night or exchange New Year gifts or supply superfluous
drinks... No Christian... performs solestitia or dancing or leaping or
diabolical chants. No Christian should presume to invoke the name of a
demon, not Neptune or Orcus or Diana or Minerva or Geniscus... No one
should observe Jove's day in idleness. ... No Christian should make or
render any devotion to the gods of the trivium, where three roads meet,
to the fanes or the rocks, or springs or groves or corners. None should
presume to hang any phylacteries from the neck of man nor beast. ..None
should presume to make lustrations or incantations with herbs, or to
pass cattle through a hollow tree or ditch ... No woman should presume
to hang amber from her neck or call upon Minerva or other ill-starred
beings in their weaving or dyeing. .. None should call the sun or moon
lord or swear by them. .. No one should tell fate or fortune or
horoscopes by them as those do who believe that a person must be what he
was born to be."
Legends from medieval Belgium concern a natural
spring which came to be known as the "Fons Remacli", a location which
may have been home to late-surviving worship of Diana. Remacle was a
monk appointed by Eligius to head a monastery at Solignac, and he is
reported to have encountered Diana worship in the area around the river
Warche. The population in this region was said to have been involved in
the worship of "Diana of the Ardennes" (a syncretism of Diana and the
Celtic goddess Arduinna), with effigies and "stones of Diana" used as
evidence of pagan practices. Remacle believed that demonic entities were
present in the spring, and had caused it to run dry. He performed and
exorcism of the water source, and installed a lead pipe, which allowed
the water to flow again.
The "Society of Diana"
Diana is the only
pagan goddess mentioned by name in the New Testament (only in some Bible
versions of Acts 19; many other Bibles refer to her as Artemis
instead). As a result, she became associated with many folk beliefs
involving goddess-like supernatural figures that Catholic clergy wished
to demonize. In the Middle Ages, legends of night-time processions of
spirits led by a female figure are recorded in the church records of
Northern Italy, western Germany, and southern France. The spirits were
said to enter houses and consume food which then miraculously
re-appeared. They would sing and dance, and dispense advice regarding
healing herbs and the whereabouts of lost objects. If the house was in
good order, they would bring fertility and plenty. If not, they would
bring curses to the family. Some women reported participating in these
processions while their bodies still lay in bed. Historian Carlo
Ginzburg has referred to these legendary spirit gatherings as "The
Society of Diana".
Local clergy complained that women believed they
were following Diana or Herodias, riding out on appointed nights to join
the processions or carry out instructions from the goddess.[86] The
earliest reports of these legends appear in the writings of Regino of
Prüm in the year 899, followed by many additional reports and variants
of the legend in documents by Ratherius and others. By 1310, the names
of the goddess figures attached to the legend were sometimes combined as
Herodiana. It is likely that the clergy of this time used the
identification of the procession's leader as Diana or Herodias in order
to fit an older folk belief into a Biblical framework, as both are
featured and demonized in the New Testament. Herodias was often
conflated with her daughter Salome in legend, which also holds that,
upon being presented with the severed head of John the Baptist, she was
blown into the air by wind from the saint's mouth, through which she
continued to wander for eternity. Diana was often conflated with Hecate,
a goddess associated with the spirits of the dead and with witchcraft.
These associations, and the fact that both figures are attested to in
the Bible, made them a natural fit for the leader of the ghostly
procession. Clergy used this identification to assert that the spirits
were evil, and that the women who followed them were inspired by demons.
As was typical of this time period, though pagan beliefs and practices
were near totally eliminated from Europe, the clergy and other
authorities still treated paganism as a real threat, in part thanks to
biblical influence; much of the Bible had been written when various
forms of paganism were still active if not dominant, so medieval clergy
applied the same kinds of warnings and admonitions for any non-standard
folk beliefs and practices they encountered.[86] Based on analysis of
church documents and parishioner confessions, it is likely that the
spirit identified by the Church as Diana or Herodias was called by names
of pre-Christian figures like Holda (a Germanic goddess of the winter
solstice), or with names referencing her bringing of prosperity, like
the Latin Abundia (meaning "plenty"), Satia (meaning "full" or
"plentiful") and the Italian Richella (meaning "rich"). Some of the
local titles for her, such as bonae res (meaning "good things"), are
similar to late classical titles for Hecate, like bona dea. This might
indicate a cultural mixture of medieval folk ideas with holdovers from
earlier pagan belief systems. Whatever her true origin, by the 13th
century, the leader of the legendary spirit procession had come to be
firmly identified with Diana and Herodias through the influence of the
Church.
Modern development and folklore
The Golden Bough
J. M. W. Turner's painting of the Golden Bough incident in the Aeneid
In
his wide-ranging, comparative study of mythology and religion, The
Golden Bough, anthropologist James George Frazer drew on various lines
of evidence to re-interpret the legendary rituals associated with Diana
at Nemi, particularly that of the rex Nemorensis. Frazer developed his
ideas in relation to J. M. W. Turner's painting, also titled The Golden
Bough, depicting a dream-like vision of the woodland lake of Nemi.
According to Frazer, the rex Nemorensis or king at Nemi was the
incarnation of a dying and reviving god, a solar deity who participated
in a mystical marriage to a goddess. He died at the harvest and was
reincarnated in the spring. Frazer claimed that this motif of death and
rebirth is central to nearly all of the world's religions and
mythologies. In Frazer's theory, Diana functioned as a goddess of
fertility and childbirth, who, assisted by the sacred king, ritually
returned life to the land in spring. The king in this scheme served not
only as a high priest but as a god of the grove. Frazer identifies this
figure with Virbius, of which little is known, but also with Jupiter via
an association with sacred oak trees. Frazer argued furthermore that
Jupiter and Juno were simply duplicate names of Jana and Janus; that is,
Diana and Dianus, all of whom had identical functions and origins.
Frazer's
speculatively reconstructed folklore of Diana's origins and the nature
of her cult at Nemi were not well received even by his contemporaries.
Godfrey Lienhardt noted that even during Frazer's lifetime, other
anthropologists had "for the most part distanced themselves from his
theories and opinions", and that the lasting influence of The Golden
Bough and Frazer's wider body of work "has been in the literary rather
than the academic world."[88] Robert Ackerman wrote that, for
anthropologists, Frazer is "an embarrassment" for being "the most famous
of them all" and that most distance themselves from his work. While The
Golden Bough achieved wide "popular appeal" and exerted a
"disproportionate" influence "on so many [20th century] creative
writers", Frazer's ideas played "a much smaller part" in the history of
academic social anthropology.
The Gospel of the Witches
4th century BC Praxitelean bronze head of a goddess wearing a lunate crown, found at Issa (Vis, Croatia)
Folk
legends like the Society of Diana, which linked the goddess to
forbidden gatherings of women with spirits, may have influenced later
works of folklore. One of these is Charles Godfrey Leland's Aradia, or
the Gospel of the Witches, which prominently featured Diana at the
center of an Italian witch-cult. In Leland's interpretation of supposed
Italian folk witchcraft, Diana is considered Queen of the Witches. In
this belief system, Diana is said to have created the world of her own
being having in herself the seeds of all creation yet to come. It was
said that out of herself she divided the darkness and the light, keeping
for herself the darkness of creation and creating her brother Lucifer.
Diana was believed to have loved and ruled with her brother, and with
him bore a daughter, Aradia (a name likely derived from Herodias), who
leads and teaches the witches on earth.
Leland's claim that Aradia
represented an authentic tradition from an underground witch-cult, which
had secretly worshiped Diana since ancient times has been dismissed by
most scholars of folklore, religion, and medieval history. After the
1921 publication of Margaret Murray's The Witch-cult in Western Europe,
which hypothesized that the European witch trials were actually a
persecution of a pagan religious survival, American sensationalist
author Theda Kenyon's 1929 book Witches Still Live connected Murray's
thesis with the witchcraft religion in Aradia. Arguments against
Murray's thesis would eventually include arguments against Leland.
Witchcraft scholar Jeffrey Russell devoted some of his 1980 book A
History of Witchcraft: Sorcerers, Heretics and Pagans to arguing against
the claims Leland presented in Aradia. Historian Elliot Rose's A Razor
for a Goat dismissed Aradia as a collection of incantations
unsuccessfully attempting to portray a religion. In his book Triumph of
the Moon, historian Ronald Hutton doubted not only of the existence of
the religion that Aradia claimed to represent, and that the traditions
Leland presented were unlike anything found in actual medieval
literature,[94] but also of the existence of Leland's sources, arguing
that it is more likely that Leland created the entire story than that
Leland could be so easily "duped".
Religious scholar Chas S. Clifton
took exception to Hutton's position, writing that it amounted to an
accusation of "serious literary fraud" made by an "argument from
absence".
Building on the work of Frazer, Murray, and others, some
20th and 21st century authors have attempted to identify links between
Diana and more localized deities. R. Lowe Thompson, for example, in his
2013 book The History of the Devil, speculated that Diana may have been
linked as an occasional "spouse" to the Gaulish horned god Cernunnos.
Thompson suggested that Diana in her role as wild goddess of the hunt
would have made a fitting consort for Cernunnos in Western Europe, and
further noted the link between Diana as Proserpina with Pluto, the Greek
god associated with the riches of the earth who served a similar role
to the Gaulish Cernunnos.
Modern worship
Because Leland's claims
about an Italian witch-cult are questionable, the first verifiable
worship of Diana in the modern age was probably begun by Wicca. The
earliest known practitioners of Neopagan witchcraft were members of a
tradition begun by Gerald Gardner. Published versions of the devotional
materials used by Gardner's group, dated to 1949, are heavily focused on
the worship of Aradia, the daughter of Diana in Leland's folklore.
Diana herself was recognized as an aspect of a single "great goddess" in
the tradition of Apuleius, as described in the Wiccan Charge of the
Goddess (itself adapted from Leland's text). Some later Wiccans, such as
Scott Cunningham, would replace Aradia with Diana as the central focus
of worship.
In the early 1960s, Victor Henry Anderson founded the
Feri Tradition, a form of Wicca that draws from both Charles Leland's
folklore and the Gardnerian tradition. Anderson claimed that he had
first been initiated into a witchcraft tradition as a child in 1926, and
that he had been told the name of the goddess worshiped by witches was
Tana.[100] The name Tana originated in Leland's Aradia, where he claimed
it was an old Etruscan name for Diana. The Feri Tradition founded by
Anderson continues to recognize Tana/Diana as an aspect of the Star
Goddess related to the element of fire, and representing "the fiery womb
that gives birth to and transforms all matter." (In Aradia, Diana is
also credited as the creatrix of the material world and Queen of
Faeries).
A few Wiccan traditions would elevate Diana to a more
prominent position of worship, and there are two distinct modern
branches of Wicca focused primarily on Diana. The first, founded during
the early 1970s in the United States by Morgan McFarland and Mark
Roberts, has a feminist theology and only occasionally accepts male
participants, and leadership is limited to female priestesses.[102][103]
McFarland Dianic Wiccans base their tradition primarily on the work of
Robert Graves and his book The White Goddess, and were inspired by
references to the existence of medieval European "Dianic cults" in
Margaret Murray's book The Witch-Cult in Western Europe. The second
Dianic tradition, founded by Zsuzsanna Budapest in the mid 1970s, is
characterized by an exclusive focus on the feminine aspect of the
divine, and as a result is exclusively female. This tradition combines
elements from British Traditional Wicca, Italian folk-magic based on the
work of Charles Leland, feminist values, and healing practices drawn
from a variety of different cultures.
A third Neopagan tradition
heavily inspired by the worship of Diana through the lens of Italian
folklore is Stregheria, founded in the 1980s. It centers around a pair
of deities regarded as divine lovers, who are known by several variant
names including Diana and Dianus, alternately given as Tana and Tanus or
Jana and Janus (the later two deity names were mentioned by James
Frazer in The Golden Bough as later corruptions of Diana and Dianus,
which themselves were alternate and possibly older names for Juno and
Jupiter). The tradition was founded by author Raven Grimassi, and
influenced by Italian folktales he was told by his mother. One such
folktale describes the moon being impregnated by her lover the morning
star, a parallel to Leland's mythology of Diana and her lover Lucifer.
Diana
was also a subject of worship in certain Feraferian rites, particularly
those surrounding the autumnal equinox, beginning in 1967.
Marcus Antonius Gordianus Pius (January
20, 225
–
February
11
, 244
),
known in
English
as Gordian III,
Following the murder of emperor Alexander Severus in Moguntiacum (modern Mainz ), the capital of the Roman province Germania Inferior , Maximinus Thrax was acclaimed emperor, despite strong opposition of the Roman senate and the majority of the population. In response to what was considered in Rome as a rebellion, Gordian's grandfather and uncle, Gordian I and II, were proclaimed joint emperors in the Africa Province . Their revolt was suppressed within a month by Cappellianus, governor of Numidia and a loyal supporter of Maximinus Thrax. The elder Gordians died, but public opinion cherished their memory as peace loving and literate men, victims of Maximinus' oppression. Meanwhile, Maximinus was on the verge of marching on Rome and the Senate elected Pupienus and Balbinus as joint emperors. These senators were not popular men and the population of Rome was still shocked by the elder Gordian's fate, so that the Senate decided to take the teenager Gordian, rename him Marcus Antonius Gordianus as his grandfather, and raise him to the rank of Caesar and imperial heir. Pupienus and Balbinus defeated Maximinus, mainly due to the defection of several legions , namely the Parthica II who assassinated Maximinus. But their joint reign was doomed from the start with popular riots, military discontent and even an enormous fire that consumed Rome in June 238. On July 29 , Pupienus and Balbinus were killed by the Praetorian guard and Gordian proclaimed sole emperor. RuleDue to Gordian's age, the imperial government was surrendered to the aristocratic families, who controlled the affairs of Rome through the senate. In 240, Sabinianus revolted in the African province, but the situation was dealt quickly. In 241, Gordian was married to Furia Sabinia Tranquillina , daughter of the newly appointed praetorian prefect, Timesitheus . As chief of the Praetorian guard and father in law of the emperor, Timesitheus quickly became the de facto ruler of the Roman empire. In the 3rd century, the Roman frontiers weakened against the Germanic tribes across the Rhine and Danube , and the Sassanid kingdom across the Euphrates increased its own attacks. When the Persians under Shapur I invaded Mesopotamia , the young emperor opened the doors of the Temple of Janus for the last time in Roman history, and sent a huge army to the East. The Sassanids were driven back over the Euphrates and defeated in the Battle of Resaena (243). The campaign was a success and Gordian, who had joined the army, was planning an invasion of the enemy's territory, when his father-in-law died in unclear circumstances. Without Timesitheus, the campaign, and the emperor's security, were at risk. Marcus Julius Philippus, also known as Philip the Arab , stepped in at this moment as the new Praetorian Prefect and the campaign proceeded. In the beginning of 244, the Persians counter-attacked. Persian sources claim that a battle was fought (Battle of Misiche) near modern Fallujah (Iraq) and resulted in a major Roman defeat and the death of Gordian III[1]. Roman sources do not mention this battle and suggest that Gordian died far away, upstream of the Euphrates. Although ancient sources often described Philip, who succeeded Gordian as emperor, as having murdered Gordian at Zaitha (Qalat es Salihiyah), the cause of Gordian's death is unknown. Gordian's youth and good nature, along with the deaths of his grandfather and uncle and his own tragic fate at the hands of another usurper, granted him the everlasting esteem of the Romans. Despite the opposition of the new emperor, Gordian was deified by the Senate after his death, in order to appease the population and avoid riots. | ||
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