Roman Pantheon
Diana
Also known as Diana Nemorensis
- hunt
- wilderness
- moon
- childbirth
- virginity
Goddess of the hunt, wild animals, wilderness, and the moon. Protector of women in childbirth. Twin sister of Apollo. Roman equivalent of Artemis.
About Diana
Diana of Aricia
Diana is huntress, moon, and protector of women in childbirth, and her oldest Latin home is not Olympus but the grove at Aricia by Lake Nemi. There she was Diana Nemorensis, and her priest, the rex Nemorensis, won the office by killing his predecessor. That grim local rule is Italian, not a footnote to Artemis.
Twin of Apollo
Myth makes her twin sister of Apollo and a sworn virgin. She runs the woods with nymphs and punishes the hunter who sees too much, as in the Actaeon story the poets borrowed. Roman women also prayed to her at childbirth, where the huntress becomes a guardian of a dangerous threshold.
Three forms
Later writers liked to fold her together with Luna and Hecate, a goddess of three faces for sky, earth, and the roads of the dead. Cult at Nemi stayed more concrete: a lakeside sanctuary, votives from women, and a woodland goddess the city never quite urbanized.
Across traditions
Parallel figures
Figures who play a role like Diana's in other traditions.
GreekArtemisIllustrationArtemis is the direct Greek equivalent, goddess of the hunt and moon
Compare Diana and Artemis side by side
Worship and cult
Temples, festivals, and practices recorded for Diana
Nemi kept a runaway-slave priest, the rex Nemorensis, who took the grove by killing his predecessor. Torches, hunting, and childbirth belong to her. The Aventine temple was a political altar for Latins under Rome as much as a hunting cult.
Sacred sites
- Temple of Diana on the Aventine, a Latin League shrine
- Diana Nemorensis at Aricia, beside Lake Nemi
Festivals
- Ides of August at Aricia
- Aventine Diana rites
Family
In the atlas
Where Diana appears
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Virgil, Aeneid, Book VII (trans. Dryden)
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
Parallels are editorial comparisons across traditions: a shared role does not, by itself, establish a shared origin.
Family relationships come from the atlas's kinship records. Ancient sources often disagree on divine genealogy.
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Genealogy
Family tree
Diana's parents, consorts, children and rivals, as recorded in the atlas.