Nemoralia
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| Nemoralia | |
|---|---|
 The Syracusan Bride leading Wild Animals in Procession to the Temple of Diana by Lord Frederick Leighton, 1866. | |
| Also called | Festival of Torches |
| Observed by | Roman Polytheists, Neopagans |
| Type | Seasonal, religious |
| Celebrations | Lighting candles and torches, wearing garlands and wreaths, making prayers and offerings to Diana by tying prayer ribbons and leaving tokens near bodies of water and other sacred places. |
| Begins | 13 August |
| Ends | 15 August |
| Related to | The Feast of the Assumption |
The Nemoralia (also known as the Festival of Torches or Hecatean Ides) is a three-day festival originally celebrated by the ancient Romans on the Ides of August (August 13–15) in honor of the goddess Diana. Although the Nemoralia was originally celebrated at the Sanctuary of Diana at Lake Nemi, it soon became more widely celebrated. The Catholic Church may have adapted the Nemoralia as the Feast of the Assumption.
A festival to Diana was held yearly at her Shrine at Lake Nemi near Ariccia on the Ides of August, a date which coincides with the traditional founding date celebrated at Aricia.[1] The origins of the festival probably pre-date the spread of Diana's worship to Rome in the 3rd century BCE, and may extend to the 6th century BCE or earlier.[1] Records from the 1st century BCE describe worshipers traveling to the sanctuary carrying torches and garlands.[2][3] Diana's festival eventually became widely celebrated throughout Italy, including at the Temple of Diana on the Aventine Hill in Rome, which was unusual given the provincial nature of Diana's cult.[4]
Symbolism
The 1st century CE poet Statius wrote of the festival:[4]
- It is the season when the most scorching region of the heavens takes over the land and the keen dog-star Sirius, so often struck by Hyperion's sun, burns the gasping fields. Now is the day when Trivia's Arician grove, convenient for fugitive kings, grows smoky, and the lake, having guilty knowledge of Hippolytus, glitters with the reflection of a multitude of torches; Diana herself garlands the deserving hunting dogs and polishes the arrowheads and allows the wild animals to go in safety, and at virtuous hearths all Italy celebrates the Hecatean Ides. (Statius Silv. 3.I.52-60)
Statius celebrated the triple nature of the goddess by invoking heavenly (the dog-star Sirius), earthly (the grove itself) and underworld (Hecatean) imagery. He also suggested, by the garlanding of the dogs and polishing of the spears, that no hunting was allowed during the festival.[4]
The hunting dogs were particularly important symbols of the celebration. They symbolize Diana's guardianship of those in her care, and garlanded, they join in the celebration rather than in the hunt, so that no hunting can take place. This represents the protection of Diana being extended to all.[4] Statius also emphasizes the importance of refuge to the worship of Diana, whose sanctuaries offered refuge to freed or escaped slaves, and in the myths of Hippolytus and Orestes, a refuge from murder, pollution, madness, and death. The 21st century historian C.M.C. Green noted that "bearing a torch in the procession to the shrine was to flee the thanatos-laden world and to take refuge in the eternal world of the sacred, cool, shady, and nurturing."[4]