Chapter 2 Lord of the Forest: Diana and Virbius

Who doesn't know Turner [1775~1851, a famous British painter.The annotations to the book were all added by the translator, so I won’t repeat them later] What about the painting titled?The painting is Nemi [Lake Nemi is located in a valley in the Alba Mountains 16 miles southeast of Rome, surrounded by the Arician jungle.It was originally a volcanic lake, about 1 mile long. On the northeast bank of the lake, there was a sanctuary of Diana in ancient times.The scenery here is beautiful, especially famous for the ancient worship of Diana and Alicia. ] The dreamlike spectacle of the small lake in the forest.The small lake was once called "Diana's mirror" by the ancients.The painting shines with the golden brilliance of the painter's rich imagination, which is saturated with Turner's extraordinary soul.The most beautiful natural scenery was apotheosis.That still lake in a green depression surrounded by the mountains of Alba, no one who has seen it will ever forget it.In the painting, despite the two Italian villages and palaces sleeping by the lake (its steeply stepped gardens stretching down to the lake), the whole picture is still and even desolate.what!Diana probably still lingers on that secluded shore, and often haunts that desolate forest!

In ancient times, this scenic forest area was a place where strange tragedies were repeatedly repeated.Just below the steep cliff on the northern shore of the lake (on which the modern village of Nemi sits) there was once a sacred grove and a place of Diana. It is about 3 miles away from here, at the foot of Alba Mountain. A steep slope separates it from this little lake, which lies in a small crater-like depression on the side of the mountain.In the sacred grove of Nemi there is a big tree, and no matter day or night, at any time, you can see a creepy figure wandering alone around it.He was a priest and a murderer.With a drawn sword in his hand, he kept looking around, as if he was always on guard against an enemy attack, and sooner or later the man he was looking for would kill him and take his place as priest.Such is the rule of the temple here: that a candidate for the priesthood shall not succeed him until he kills the priest, until he himself is killed by another stronger or more cunning.

The extremely precarious office of priesthood he had acquired had the title of king.Yet he was more restless and haunted by nightmares than any king.Year after year, regardless of midsummer or severe winter, no matter whether it is sunny or cloudy, he has to patrol alone all the time, and whenever he takes a short rest in anxiety, he is in danger of dying. If the skills are slightly weakened, they will be in danger.His gray hair might have meant stamping his death sentence.And to the gentle and pious pilgrims who came to worship at the temple, his old and stern figure overshadowed the bright scenery, like a dark cloud suddenly covering the sun on a sunny day.If there is no such ferocious appearance of his, how harmonious and beautiful the bright blue sky of Italy, the mottled summer avenues, and the sparkling blue waves under the sun would be!Instead, we can imagine a picture of what a lost traveler might witness on a bleak autumn night, when the fallen leaves are deep and the west wind is singing an elegy for the dying years. of it.It's a sombre picture, with a touch of melancholy - black jagged silhouettes against a background of woods against a cloudy, stormy sky, the wind whining among the branches and leaves rustling underfoot The icy water lapped against the shore; the foreground of the picture was: the pale moon skimming through the clouds, peeping down through the intertwined branches, a ghostly black figure, with the flash of iron on his shoulder, flickering Suddenly and secretly wandering around the tree.

This strange system of succession to the priesthood did not have consorts in ancient Greece and Rome, so it cannot be explained from there.To find the answer, we have to go back to the source.No one will deny that such a custom, characteristic of a barbaric period and surviving down to the time of the Roman Empire, stands out in civilized Italian society like an ancient rocky cliff looming over a well-manicured lawn.It is the brutality and savagery of this custom that arouses the desire to explain it, and recent studies of the early history of man have shown that the minds of ancient and modern men are basically similar.Early humans expounded their original simple philosophy of life with ideas that are basically similar to those of today's humans (although there are many differences on the surface).If, therefore, we could show that a practice as barbaric as the priesthood of Nemi existed elsewhere; if we could discover the motives which led to it; and in various circumstances formed a variety of specific and different generally the same customs; finally, if we can also show that these motives, together with the customs derived from them, were indeed still active in the ancient Greek and Roman times, then we will It is quite certain that in still more remote times these same motives gave birth to the customs inherited by the priesthood of Nemi.Perhaps our inferences may never be fully confirmed, owing to the lack of direct evidence of how the priesthood arose, but as the conditions I have indicated are gradually fulfilled, they may become more or less plausible. .The purpose of this book is, by satisfying these conditions, to provide a generally plausible account of the system of priestly succession at Nemi.