Therefore we may now fairly ask, May not the King of
the Wood have had an origin like that which a probable tradition
assigns to the Sacrificial King of Rome and the titular King of
Athens? In other words, may not his predecessors in office have been
a line of kings whom a republican revolution stripped of their
political power, leaving them only their religious functions and the
shadow of a crown? There are at least two reasons for answering this
question in the negative. One reason is drawn from the abode of the
priest of Nemi; the other from his title, the King of the Wood. If
his predecessors had been kings in the ordinary sense, he would
surely have been found residing, like the fallen kings of Rome and
Athens, in the city of which the sceptre had passed from him. This
city must have been Aricia, for there was none nearer. But Aricia
was three miles off from his forest sanctuary by the lake shore. If
he reigned, it was not in the city, but in the greenwood. Again his
title, King of the Wood, hardly allows us to suppose that he had
ever been a king in the common sense of the word.
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