This week’s theme: the Moon.

Glossary

Diana: the Roman goddess of wild animals and the hunt. Corresponds to the Greek Artemis, who in turn is associated with Selene, the goddess of the moon.

Cynthia: a surname of Artemis or Diana. From Mount Cynthus, where she was born.

Hesperus: the evening star. Variously described by different authors as the father of the Hesperides (the guardians of the golden apples) or of their mother, Hesperis. Incidentally, the word ‘vespers’ (meaning ‘evensong’, or, more generally, ‘evening’), derives from the name.

– culled from various sources, pre-eminent among them being

Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, available online at www.bibliomania.com

This is Ben Jonson at his lyric best; the master dramatist (second only to Shakespeare in his own era; some claim the position as his for all time) mixes classical grace with a surety and lightness of touch that even the Bard rarely attained.

— Thomas

Links

Other poems by Ben Jonson on the Minstrels website:

  Poem #301, "The Noble Nature"
  Poem #313, "Gypsy Songs"
  Poem #340, "To Celia"

The second of these has a biography and critical assessment attached.

For more wonderful lyrics from the Elizabethan era, see

Poem #565, “Now Winter Nights Enlarge”, Thomas Campion Poem #384, “Song”, John Donne

[More about Diana]

In Roman religion, goddess of wild animals and the hunt, virtually

indistinguishable from the Greek goddess Artemis. Her name is akin to the Latin words dium (“sky”) and dius (“daylight”). Like her Greek counterpart, she was also a goddess of domestic animals. As a fertility deity she was invoked by women to aid conception and delivery. Though perhaps originally an indigenous woodland goddess, Diana early became identified with Artemis. There was probably no original connection between Diana and the moon, but she later absorbed Artemis’ identification with both Selene (Luna) and Hecate, a chthonic (infernal) deity; hence the characterization triformis sometimes used in Latin literature.

The most famous place of worship for the Italian goddess was the grove of

Diana Nemorensis (“Diana of the Wood”) on the shores of Lake Nemi at Aricia, near Rome. This was a shrine common to the cities of the Latin League. Associated with Diana at Aricia were Egeria, the spirit of a nearby stream who shared with Diana the guardianship of childbirth, and the hero Virbius (the Italian counterpart of Hippolytus), who was said to have been the first priest of Diana’s cult at Aricia. A unique and peculiar custom dictated that this priest be a runaway slave and that he slay his predecessor in combat.

At Rome the most important temple of Diana was on the Aventine. This

temple housed the foundation charter of the Latin League and was said to date back to King Servius Tullius (6th century BC). In her cult there Diana was also considered the protector of the lower classes, especially slaves; the Ides (13th) of August, her festival at Rome and Aricia, was a holiday for slaves. Another important centre for the worship of Diana was at Ephesus, where the Temple of Artemis (or Diana) was one of the Seven Wonders of the World. In Roman art Diana usually appears as a huntress with bow and quiver, accompanied by a hound or deer.

– EB

Moreover

The phrase “how short soever” in the third stanza is a rare (but

excellent) example of ‘tmesis’, which the OED defines as “the separation of the elements of a compound word by the interposition of another word or words”.

Mike Oldfield uses an excerpt (three lines) from “Hymn to Diana” in his

1978 album “Incantations”. More prominence in the said album is given to a rather longish selection from Longfellow’s “Song of Hiawatha”, Poem #362 on the Minstrels website. In yet another demonstration of the fundamental interconnectedness of all things, it was only last week that we ran another Longfellow poem, “The Wreck of the (wait for it!) Hesperus”. So now you know.