Hymn to Diana

[athene]

x-posted to my own journal, classics, latin, and mythology

34 - Hymn to Diana
By Catullus (translated by me)

We unmarried girls and boys
Are under the tutelage of Diana:
Unmarried boys and girls
Let us sing to Diana.

O daughter of Leto,
Great offspring of greatest Jove,
Your mother birthed you
Near a Delian olive tree,

So you could be mistress of the mountains
And of the growing woods
And of the secluded woodland glades
And of the sounding rivers:

You are called Lucina Juno
By women the pains of childbirth,
You are called magical Triple-Way¹ and
Luna by your counterfeit light.

You, goddess, in your monthly course
Marking off the journey of the year,
You fill up the rural hut
Of the farmer with good crops.

By whatever name pleases you
May you be divine,
And as you have been accustomed to before, may you
Preserve the offspring of Romulus with good auspices.


34
Dianae sumus in fide
puellae et pueri integri:
Dianam pueri integri
puellaeque canamus.

O Latonia, maximi
magna progenies Iovis,
quam mater prope Deliam
deposivit olivam,

monitum domina ut fores
silvarumque virentium
saltuumque reconditorum
amniumque sonantum:

tu Lucina dolentibus
Iuno dicta puerperis,
tu potens Trivia et notho es
dicta lumine Luna.

Tu cursu, dea, menstruo
metiens iter annuum,
rustica agricolae bonis
tecta frugibus exples.

Sis quocumque tibi placet
sancta nomine, Romulique,
anitque ut solita es, bona
sospites ope gentem.


¹The latin is Trivia, or Three-Roads, which implies Hekate, the triple goddess of the crossroads and of magic.

Comments

[darktouch.livejournal.com]

Facinating. I didn't realize that Hekate was doing magic by this point in her career.

I have absolutely no knowledge of.. *checks* latin, these are the Roman names other than common sense developed from 8 years of public school spanish. Which part of it is the reference to Persephone (er, *checks again* Prosperpina)? Just my sense of symetry asserting its curiosity.

[athene.livejournal.com]

As the "Crone" aspect of the Triple Goddess, Hekate has always been associated with magic. The idea of the wise old woman now that her looks have faded.

Proserpina is not in this poem at all. It is about the triple aspect of the moon (Luna/Diana): Virgin Huntress (Artemis), the Goddess of Childbirth (Lucina), and the Wise Woman (Hekate).

The poem follows the traditional hymnal style of calling upon the god, giving a short story of myth about the god, naming the different aspects/names of the god, using the escape clause ("or by whatever other name that we might have left out pleases you at this time"), then finally asking the god "if I've ever done things for you, or if you've ever done things for me, then do this for me now".

[darktouch.livejournal.com]

Hekate has always facinated me because of her migration from the mid-wife frog goddess in egypt through to her modern day 'dark' goddess aspect.

I had done 'research' a while back and what I had found was a strong connection to the Persephone myth making her a triple goddess with Persephone and Diana. (Though Diana's inclusion always sorta confused me) This connection with Hera isn't something that I'd picked up on when I went through it the last time and bears more looking into. Thanks for the insight.

[athene.livejournal.com]

well, what Catullus is doing here is joining 3 goddesses (artemis, juno, hekate) under the goddess Diana (which has the same derivitive as the word that means "day"). The Romans were very free with their gods. They often would join them in ways that to us doesn't make much sense. However, if a woman died in childbirth then it was said that she was struck down by the arrows of Artemis, so connecting her with the idea of Juno of Childbirth doesn't seem that far off, espcially if you pull in the idea of the full moon (Luna) as a pregnant woman.

I've never heard of Persephone coming into the triple goddess. I always heard Artemis, Luna, Hekate (or something like that). Persephone was a kora (maiden) and then a wife. I guess if you want to join her with Hekate of the underworld, but that doesn't make much sense to me as Hekate by herself is a triple goddess b/c she can look all ways at the cross-roads. Actually, Hekate has been associated with dark night and therefore with mysteries and women's magic for a long time (since the Greeks).

[darktouch.livejournal.com]

Hekate gets her connection with Persephone in that she was one of two (I think the other was helios) dieties who witnessed persephone's abduction by hades into the underworld and later had a hand in retrieving her from such.

As the three moon goddess' Hekate was the Moon of Heaven, Diana was the Moon of the Earth, and Persephone was the Moon of the Underworld.

Her connection with the Heavens came from her early existence as Daughter of the titans (her bloodline being 'far off' but Zues in a show of respect gave her dominion over a portion of the heavens and a portion of the seas. She was later toned down and made to be 'just' one of Zues' many childer.