The Golden Bough - The Original Classic Edition. Frazer Sir

himself to Hades. But Diana hid her favourite from the angry god in a thick cloud, disguised his features by adding years to his life,

       and then bore him far away to the dells of Nemi, where she entrusted him to the nymph Egeria, to live there, unknown and solitary,

       under the name of Virbius, in the depth of the Italian forest. There he reigned a king, and there he dedicated a precinct to Diana.

       He had a comely son, Virbius, who, undaunted by his father's fate, drove a team of fiery steeds to join the Latins in the war against

       Aeneas and the Trojans. Virbius was worshipped as a god not only at Nemi but elsewhere; for in Campania we hear of a special

       priest devoted to his service. Horses were excluded from the Arician grove and sanctuary because horses had killed Hippolytus. It

       was unlawful to touch his image. Some thought that he was the sun. "But the truth is," says Servius, "that he is a deity associated

       with Diana, as Attis is associated with the Mother of the Gods, and Erichthonius with Minerva, and Adonis with Venus." What the

       nature of that association was we shall enquire presently. Here it is worth observing that in his long and chequered career this mythi-

       cal personage has displayed a remarkable tenacity of life. For we can hardly doubt that the Saint Hippolytus of the Roman calendar,

       who was dragged by horses to death on the thirteenth of August, Diana's own day, is no other than the Greek hero of the same

       name, who, after dying twice over as a heathen sinner, has been happily resuscitated as a Christian saint.

       It needs no elaborate demonstration to convince us that the stories told to account for Diana's worship at Nemi are unhistorical. Clearly they belong to that large class of myths which are made up to explain the origin of a religious ritual and have no other foundation than the resemblance, real or imaginary, which may be traced between it and some foreign ritual. The incongruity of these Nemi myths is indeed transparent, since the foundation of the worship is traced now to Orestes and now to Hippolytus, according

       as this or that feature of the ritual has to be accounted for. The real value of such tales is that they serve to illustrate the nature of

       the worship by providing a standard with which to compare it; and further, that they bear witness indirectly to its venerable age by

       showing that the true origin was lost in the mists of a fabulous antiquity. In the latter respect these Nemi legends are probably more

       to be trusted than the apparently historical tradition, vouched for by Cato the Elder, that the sacred grove was dedicated to Diana

       by a certain Egerius Baebius or Laevius of Tusculum, a Latin dictator, on behalf of the peoples of Tusculum, Aricia, Lanuvium, Laurentum, Cora, Tibur, Pometia, and Ardea. This tradition indeed speaks for the great age of the sanctuary, since it seems to date

       its foundation sometime before 495 B.C., the year in which Pometia was sacked by the Romans and disappears from history. But

       we cannot suppose that so barbarous a rule as that of the Arician priesthood was deliberately instituted by a league of civilised

       communities, such as the Latin cities undoubtedly were. It must have been handed down from a time beyond the memory of man,

       when Italy was still in a far ruder state than any known to us in the historical period. The credit of the tradition is rather shaken than

       confirmed by another story which ascribes the foundation of the sanctuary to a certain Manius Egerius, who gave rise to the saying,

       "There are many Manii at Aricia." This proverb some explained by alleging that Manius Egerius was the ancestor of a long and dis-

       tinguished line, whereas others thought it meant that there were many ugly and deformed people at Aricia, and they derived the name

       Manius from Mania, a bogey or bugbear to frighten children. A Roman satirist uses the name Manius as typical of the beggars who

       lay in wait for pilgrims on the Arician slopes. These differences of opinion, together with the discrepancy between Manius Egerius

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       of Aricia and Egerius Laevius of Tusculum, as well as the resemblance of both names to the mythical Egeria, excite our suspicion. Yet the tradition recorded by Cato seems too circumstantial, and its sponsor too respectable, to allow us to dismiss it as an idle fiction. Rather we may suppose that it refers to some ancient restoration or reconstruction of the sanctuary, which was actually carried out by the confederate states. At any rate it testifies to a belief that the grove had been from early times a common place of worship for many of the oldest cities of the country, if not for the whole Latin confederacy.

       2. Artemis and Hippolytus

       I HAVE said that the Arician legends of Orestes and Hippolytus, though worthless as history, have a certain value in so far as they may help us to understand the worship at Nemi better by comparing it with the ritual and myths of other sanctuaries. We must ask

       ourselves, Why did the author of these legends pitch upon Orestes and Hippolytus in order to explain Virbius and the King of the

       Wood? In regard to Orestes, the answer is obvious. He and the image of the Tauric Diana, which could only be appeased with hu-

       man blood, were dragged in to render intelligible the murderous rule of succession to the Arician priesthood. In regard to Hippoly-

       tus the case is not so plain. The manner of his death suggests readily enough a reason for the exclusion of horses from the grove;

       but this by itself seems hardly enough to account for the identification. We must try to probe deeper by examining the worship as

       well as the legend or myth of Hippolytus.

       He had a famous sanctuary at his ancestral home of Troezen, situated on that beautiful, almost landlocked bay, where groves of oranges and lemons, with tall cypresses soaring like dark spires above the garden of Hesperides, now clothe the strip of fertile shore at the foot of the rugged mountains. Across the blue water of the tranquil bay, which it shelters from the open sea, rises Poseidon's sacred island, its peaks veiled in the sombre green of the pines. On this fair coast Hippolytus was worshipped. Within his sanctuary stood a temple with an ancient image. His service was performed by a priest who held office for life; every year a sacrificial festival was held in his honour; and his untimely fate was yearly mourned, with weeping and doleful chants, by unwedded maids. Youths and maidens dedicated locks of their hair in his temple before marriage. His grave existed at Troezen, though the people would not show it. It has been suggested, with great plausibility, that in the handsome Hippolytus, beloved of Artemis, cut off in his youthful prime, and yearly mourned by damsels, we have one of those mortal lovers of a goddess who appear so often in ancient religion, and of whom Adonis is the most familiar type. The rivalry of Artemis and Phaedra for the affection of Hippolytus reproduces, it is said,

       under different names, the rivalry of Aphrodite and Proserpine for the love of Adonis, for Phaedra is merely a double of Aphrodite.

       The theory probably does no injustice either to Hippolytus or to Artemis. For Artemis was originally a great goddess of fertility, and,

       on the principles of early religion, she who fertilises nature must herself be fertile, and to be that she must necessarily have a male

       consort. On this view, Hippolytus was the consort of Artemis at Troezen, and the shorn tresses offered to him by the Troezenian

       youths and maidens before marriage were designed to strengthen his union with the goddess, and so to promote the fruitfulness of

       the earth, of cattle, and of mankind. It is some confirmation of this view that within the precinct of Hippolytus at Troezen there

       were worshipped two female powers named Damia and Auxesia, whose connexion with the fertility of the ground is unquestionable.

       When Epidaurus suffered from a dearth, the people, in obedience to an oracle, carved images of Damia and Auxesia out of sacred