one, not as she was known later, in the disguise of
Artemis, but as the deity of that shrine--"pinguis et placabilis ara
Dianae"--of which the priest was the Rex Nemorensis: he who "slew the
slayer and shall himself be slain."[491] But in those days it was only
the fact that she was the chief local deity of Aricia, the leading city
of the new league, which brought her suddenly into notice. When the
strategic position of Rome gave her in turn the lead in Latium, Diana
passed on from Aricia to the Tiber, entered on a new life, and
eventually took over the attributes of Artemis, with whom she had much
in common. The Diana whom we know in Roman literature is really Artemis;
but Diana of the Aventine, when she first arrived there, was the
wood-spirit of Aricia, and her temple was an outward sign of Rome's new
position in Latium: it was built by the chiefs of the Latin cities in
conjunction with Rome, and is described by Varro as "commune Latinorum
Dianae templum."[492] It was appropriately placed on the only Roman hill
which was then still covered with wood, and was outside the _pomoerium_.

There was one other goddess, a Latin one, who was traditionally
associated with this period, and especially with king Servius
Tullius--Fortuna, or Fors Fortuna; she does not appear in the calendar,
had no _flamen_, and must have been introduced from outside. But it was
long before Fortuna became of any real importance in Rome, and I shall
leave her out of account here. She had two homes of renown in Latium, at
Antium and Praeneste, and was in each connected with a kind of oracle,
which seems to have been specially resorted to by women before and after
childbirth. She was also very probably a deity of other kinds of
fertility; and in course of time she took on the characteristics of the
Greek Tyche, and became a favourite deity of good luck.[493]

Let us pause for one moment to reflect on the character of these new
deities of whom I have been speaking: Hercules, Castor, Minerva, Diana.
It must be confessed that, as compared with the great deities of the
calendar, they are uninteresting; with the exception, perhaps, of
Hercules, they do not seem to have any real _religious_ significance.
They are local deities brought in from outside, and have no root in the
mind of the Roman people as we have so far been studying it. They seem
to indicate the growth of a population in which the true old Roman
religious instinct was absent; they represent