He may have personated in
flesh and blood the great Italian god of the sky, Jupiter, who had
kindly come down from heaven in the lightning flash to dwell among
men in the mistletoe--the thunder-besom--the Golden Bough--growing
on the sacred oak in the dells of Nemi. If that was so, we need not
wonder that the priest guarded with drawn sword the mystic bough
which contained the god's life and his own. The goddess whom he
served and married was herself, if I am right, no other than the
Queen of Heaven, the true wife of the sky-god. For she, too, loved
the solitude of the woods and the lonely hills, and sailing overhead
on clear nights in the likeness of the silver moon looked down with
pleasure on her own fair image reflected on the calm, the burnished
surface of the lake, Diana's Mirror.
LXIX. Farewell to Nemi
WE are at the end of our enquiry, but as often happens in the search
after truth, if we have answered one question, we have raised many
more; if we have followed one track home, we have had to pass by
others that opened off it and led, or seemed to lead, to far other
goals than the sacred grove at Nemi.
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