Gods, Goddesses, and Ancient Legends
Moments after her own birth, the newborn Diana turned and helped her mother deliver her twin Apollo. The virgin who would never bear a child of her own was a midwife before she was an hour old.
Actaeon did nothing wrong. He took a wrong turn in the woods and saw a goddess bathing — and for that accident Diana turned him into a stag and let his own hounds tear him apart.
Luna was the moon — not a symbol of it, not a metaphor for it, but the moon itself made divine. The Romans did not separate the celestial body from the goddess who animated it.
Diana’s sanctuary at Nemi was served by a priest who held his position by killing his predecessor and keeping it by being ready to kill his successor at any moment. That institution — the King of the Wood, living armed in the grove, sleeping with his sword — tells you more about Diana’s torch than any amount of moonlight symbolism.
Trivia’s name means “of the three ways” — the three roads that meet at a crossroads. The Romans left offerings there at night, not because crossroads were neutral ground, but because they weren’t.
At Diana’s oldest shrine, beside an Italian lake, her priest was a runaway slave who had murdered the priest before him — and who waited, sword in hand, for the man who would one day murder him.