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Diana Nemorensis


Diana Nemorensis ("Diana of Nemi"), also known as "Diana of the Wood", was an Italic form of the goddess who became Hellenised during the fourth century BCE and conflated with Artemis. Her sanctuary was to be found on the northern shore of Lake Nemi beneath the cliffs of the modern city Nemi (Latin nemus Aricinum). This lake is referred to by poets as speculum Dianae, "Diana's Mirror". But the town of Aricia was situated about three miles off, at the foot of the Albanus Mons, the Alban Mount, and separated by a steep descent from the lake, which lies in a small crater-like hollow on the mountainside.

According to one of several Hellenising foundation myths, the worship of Diana at Nemi would have been instituted by Orestes, who, after killing Thoas, king in the Tauric Chersonesus (the Crimea), fled with his sister Iphigenia to Italy, bringing with him the image of the Tauric Diana hidden in a mound of sticks. After his death, the myth has it, 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 was said that every stranger who landed on the shore was sacrificed on her altar, but that, when transported to Italy, the rite of human sacrifice assumed a milder form.

No historical or archaeological evidence links these Greek myths to the cultus at Nemi.


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