Such magical dramas have played a great part in the popular
festivals of Europe, and based as they are on a very crude
conception of natural law, it is clear that they must have been
handed down from a remote antiquity. We shall hardly, therefore, err
in assuming that they date from a time when the forefathers of the
civilised nations of Europe were still barbarians, herding their
cattle and cultivating patches of corn in the clearings of the vast
forests, which then covered the greater part of the continent, from
the Mediterranean to the Arctic Ocean. But if these old spells and
enchantments for the growth of leaves and blossoms, of grass and
flowers and fruit, have lingered down to our own time in the shape
of pastoral plays and popular merry-makings, is it not reasonable to
suppose that they survived in less attenuated forms some two
thousand years ago among the civilised peoples of antiquity? Or, to
put it otherwise, is it not likely that in certain festivals of the
ancients we may be able to detect the equivalents of our May Day,
Whitsuntide, and Midsummer celebrations, with this difference, that
in those days the ceremonies had not yet dwindled into mere shows
and pageants, but were still religious or magical rites, in which
the actors consciously supported the high parts of gods and
goddesses? Now in the first chapter of this book we found reason to
believe that the priest who bore the title of King of the Wood at
Nemi had for his mate the goddess of the grove, Diana herself.
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