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.
Primary Sources
Historical texts and references
“But chaste Diana, who his death deplor'd, with Aesculapian herbs his life restor'd.”
Worship & Cult
How Diana was venerated in ancient times
Sacred Temples
•Temple of Diana on the Aventine, a Latin League shrine
•Diana Nemorensis at Aricia, beside Lake Nemi
Festivals & Celebrations
Ides of August at AriciaAventine Diana rites
Worship Practices
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.
