Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/337

 The European Sky -God. 289

of some sort was in fact worshipped along with Diana at Nemi, and was conceived as immanent in the person of the rex Nemorensis. The worship of a Jupiter Dianus (Janus) appears not only from an unfinished marble bust "probably intended to represent Jupiter,"^ which was found by Lord Savile in one of the shrines on the spot, but also from a very remarkable Janiform stele discovered in the same precinct. This stele, which is inscribed SACR DIAN (presumably " Sacred to Dian^?," though conceivably " Sacred to T>\zxms "), is described as follows in the official Catalogue'^ : it "consists of the head of a beardless young man, and of an elderly man with a flowing beard. Both have on their foreheads fishes' fins, looking like small wings, aquatic plants cover the neck and chest, and scales cover the cheeks of both heads ; the head of the young man has a small fin at each angle of the mouth, the beard of the elder head seems saturated with water, and the long damp hair of both heads seems to be blown about in the wind. Etc." I take it that this stele portrays Dianus (Janus) as a water-god. Diana beside the lake of Nemi, which was called her " Mirror," ^ may well have been, as Th. Birt ^ conjectured, not only a goddess of the bright sky,^ but also a goddess of the bright reflecting water. And Dianus (Janus), whom Nigidius Figulus held

^ G. H. Wallis Illustrated Catalogue of the Nottingham Art Museum no. 832.

"^ Id. ib. no. 611, where the stele is figured.

''Serv. in Verg. Aen. 7. 516 Triviae lac us : hie est qui Dianae speculum dicitur, cp. Corp. inscrr. Lat. xiv. 2772.

■* Birt in Roscher Lex. i. 1005 f.

■'The torch-hght procession to the Lake in honour of Diana Nemorensis took place on the Ides at the hottest time of year (Stat silv. 3. i. 52 ff.), i.e. on Aug. 13th, which was the birthday of Diana and, like all other Tdes, a festival of Jupiter (W. Warde Fowler The Hoinan Festivals p. 198). For the inferences deducible from these facts see Birt. loc. cit. Diana was certainly a sky-goddess at Tibur : Corp. inscrr. Lat. xiv. 3536 (Tibur) Dianae Caelesti sacrum etc.

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