Diana the virgin

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Diana the virgin

Postby Lucius Tyrrhenus Garrulus on Mon Mar 29, 2004 7:54 am

SALVETE OMNES!

I've been reading some early Christian authors, and they have often used Diana as an example of a chaste woman. In fact they have used terms like "chaste," "virgin" and "untouched."

1) Is this true? Is Diana a virgin Goddess?
2) Can anyone tell me the names of any Roman authors who refered to her as such?

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Postby Anonymous on Mon Mar 29, 2004 12:23 pm

Ave Garrule!

I'm sure that Diana/Artemis was almost universally considered to be a Virgin Goddess although there are some contradictions in the myths about Her. Things are probably confused by the tendency to see Diana, and various other Goddesses as having different aspects. Diana, as she was worshipped at Ephesus was very much concerned with fertility, and as Lucina with childbirth which seems to conflict with her status as Virgin at first sight. It is also difficult to see exactly where one Deity ends and another begins on occasion (see Apuleius' Golden Ass Book 11). Lucina seems in some cases to be Diana, for example, and at others Iuno.

Horace (Ode 22,Book III) certainly refers to Her as 'Virgo'. In my English translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, particularly see Book 3, there seem to be a number of references although I don't have a Latin text to double-check this. There are also countless references to the Goddess as being 'chaste' which in context would seem to amount to the same thing.

My suspicion is that this is only the tip of a very large iceberg!

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Postby Quintus Aurelius Orcus on Mon Mar 29, 2004 6:52 pm

Salve Garrule

I think we have to be careful when speaking of chaste woman, virgins during antiquity because there it had a different meaning. I'm not fully up to date on Roman point of view of unmarried women, but in Hellas it was perceived that a woman who wasn't married was in fact called a virgin. I'm mostly speaking of Artemis, the Hellenic counterpart of Diana. Maybe for Romans it was the same.
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Postby Horatius Piscinus on Tue Mar 30, 2004 4:12 pm

Salvete

Good point, Romule. Virgo means young woman and caste means chaste, but not in a modern Christian sense. A married woman was regarded chaste if she remained monogomous to her husband, no matter how often she married. Women could and did go through annual purification rites to renew their virginity, a rite associate with Venus, whose virginity and chasty was annually renewed. That may have been an earlier Roman Venus than the one we normally think of, because the Etruscan Venus is a goddess of chastity in marriage and nothing like Greek Aphrodite.

Diana is a virgin goddess, and chaste. Almost every reference to Her addresses Her as such. Even the popular comedy of the imperial period that was called "The Flogging of Diana" probably played on the idea of how Diana went through great lengths to protect Her virginity and deny Herself to men, or gods. The title of the play, and the Christian comments about it, suggest the play was similar to "The Taming of the Shrew". Minerva is treated in the same way, as a virgin after Greek Athene, and She is chaste even though in Her Roman version Minerva was married to Hercules and bore him a son, Maris (not the same as Mars). Roman understanding of those terms are unlike what is now their common understanding.

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Postby Lucius Tyrrhenus Garrulus on Tue Jul 20, 2004 7:08 am

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Now I'm really confused. De Natura Deorum, 3.58:
Again, there are several Dianas. The first is the daughter of Jupiter and Proserpina, and she is said to be the mother of the winged Cupid. The second is more familiar to us, having been born, we are told, from Jupiter mark three and Latona. Tradition has it that the father of the third was Upis, and that her mother was Glauce; the Greeks often call her Upis after her father.
So there was more than one Diana?
Is the second Diana from the above quote the "standard" (for lack of a better word) Diana? The one which we read of in mythology books who inspired artists to the Renaissance and beyond?
Are these other Dianas mentioned anywhere else?

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Postby Horatius Piscinus on Tue Jul 20, 2004 2:22 pm

Salve Luci Garrule

Lucius Tyrrhenus Garrulus wrote:So there was more than one Diana?


There is at least two distinct Dianas. One is the chaste virgin Huntress, the other is associated with the moon after the Greek Artemis. Diana Lucina is a goddess of childbirth because of the association of the moon with a woman's cycle. Originally Lucina was a goddess in Her own right, associated with Diana at some Latin centers, such as at Ariccia, while adopted into Rome initially in association with Juno. But there are many more Junos. Recall that what in men is called a genius is in women called a juno, so that all goddesses had a juno. There seems to have been an even more ancient Diana, one that was believed to be the wife of one form of Janus. Where Janus was associated with the sun at dawn, this Diana would be associated with the night, and moonrise, thus the confusion with the Greek Artemis.

Lucius Tyrrhenus Garrulus wrote:Is the second Diana from the above quote the "standard" (for lack of a better word) Diana?The one which we read of in mythology books who inspired artists to the Renaissance and beyond?


She is the Greek Artemis, and thus the one most often referred to in Roman poetry. The Huntress Diana more often influenced Renaissance art and philosophy. These however were not the Diana more commonly worshipped among the Romans, as that would have been Lucina.

Lucius Tyrrhenus Garrulus wrote:Are these other Dianas mentioned anywhere else?


Certainly. Here is a brief list of some. Apul. Met. XI 2; XI 5; Catul 34.21-2; Cic. In Verr. II 5.184; Horat. Carm. I.12.13; 1.21.1; 3.22.2; Epist. 5.5; Carm. Saec. 13; Epod. 5.5; Laevius fr. 26; Ovid Fasti 2.449; Sil. It. Pun. 9.168-72; 13.137; Statius Theb. IV 746-64; VI 633-37; Tertul de Anim. 39; Val. Cato Lyd. 41-4; Virg. Aen. VI.55; IX 404; XI 483; XI 557; XII 197. Regarding what Cicero said, see Varro De Lingua Latina V 68-69.

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Postby Lucius Tyrrhenus Garrulus on Wed Jul 21, 2004 7:18 am

Salve Marce!
That definately clears things up. Plus some good resources too. :)
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Postby Horatius Piscinus on Wed Jul 21, 2004 12:59 pm

Salvete Garrule et omnes

Don't get too hung up over it. Let me go over this again. The names of deities you find in the myths do not identify specific deities. They are titles, not names. The Romans mention that the names of their deities were kept secret. At public rites a god would first be invoked by intoning his title, such as calling to Jove. EE-OO- Whey, almost like the guards of the Wicked Witch of the West sing in the Wizard of Oz. (or maybe exactly the same as that is where they took that song from) Then the praesidium would bend down and murmur the secret name over the offerings as the deity was directly addressed. Turning then, the god was then invited to partake in the offerings by again saying only his title aloud, so that the "vulgar masses" never knew the secret names of the Roman gods.

Cicero also mentioned that there were three Jupiters, identifying them by their fathers and birthplace. Later in the Empire there were even more gods identified by this title of "Sky Father" but only the Jupiter Capitolinus was the Roman Jupiter. What was Jupiter Capitolinus' true name? Well it was a secret so we have no idea today by what name the Romans invoked Him.

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Postby Lucius Tyrrhenus Garrulus on Sun Aug 29, 2004 1:15 am

SALVETE OMNES, S.V.B.E.V.

Thanks for everybody's help with this. Just curious... anyone have an opinion of this article? It raises a few good points about later authors and artists not understanding the classics. But I am suspicious of the article from its lack of sources.

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Postby Horatius Piscinus on Sun Aug 29, 2004 11:07 am

Salve

Lucius Tyrrhenus Garrulus wrote: It raises a few good points about later authors and artists not understanding the classics. But I am suspicious of the article from its lack of sources.


She appears to have an ax to grind and best describes herself in the end when she wrote "the mistakes of lazy historians rewriting history for simpletons." Looking at 15-18th Western art is not about to shed any light on ancient myth, and even less on its prehistoric origins.
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