DIANA, the goddess of hunting. According to Cicero, there were three of this name; a daughter of Jupiter and Proserpine, who became mother of Cupid; a daughter of Jupiter and Latona; and a daughter of Upis and Glauce. The second is the most celebrated, and to her all the ancients allude. She was born at the same birth as Apollo; and the pains which she saw her mother suffer during her labour gave her such an aversion to marriage, that she obtained permission of her father to live in perpetual celibacy, and fo preside over the travails of women. In order to shun the society of men, she devoted herself to hunting, and was always accompanied by a number of chosen virgins, who, like herself, abjured the use of marriage. She is represented with a bow and quiver, and attended by dogs, and sometimes drawn in a chariot by two white stags. Sometimes she appears with wings, holding a lion in one hand, and a panther in the other, with a chariot drawn by two heifers, or two horses of different colours. She is represented as tall; her face has something manly in it; her legs are bare, well shaped, and strong; and her feet are covered with a buskin worn by huntresses among the ancients. She received many sirnames, particularly from the places where her worship was established, and from the functions over which she presided. She was called Lucina, llythia, or Juno Pronuba, when invoked by women in childbed; and Trivia when worshipped in the crossways, where her statues were generally erected. She was supposed to be the same as the moon and Proserpine or Hecate, and from that circumstance she was called Triformis ; and some of her statues represented her with three heads, namely, those of a horse, a dog, and a boar. She was also called Agrotera, Orithia, Taurica, Delia, Cynthia, Aricia, and the like. She was supposed to be the same as the Isis of the Egyptians, whose worship was introduced into Greece along with that of Osiris under the name of Apollo. When Typhon waged war against the gods, Diana, to avoid his fury, metamorphosed herself into a cat. She is generally known in the figures representing her, by the crescent on her head, by the dogs which attend her, and by her hunting habit. The most famous of her temples was that of Ephesus, which formed one of the seven wonders of the world. (See Ephesus.) She was there represented with a great number of breasts, and other symbols, which signified the earth or Cybele. Though she was the patroness of chastity, yet she forgot her dignity in order to enjoy the company of Endymion; and the favours she granted to Pan and Orion are also recorded among the mythic scandal of antiquity. The inhabitants of Taurica were particularly attached to the worship of this goddess, and they cruelly offered on her altar all the strangers who suffered shipwreck on their coasts. Her temple in Africa was always served by a priest who had murdered his predecessor; and the Lacedaemonians yearly offered her human victims till the age of Lycurgus, who changed this barbarous custom for the sacrifice of flagellation. The Athenians generally offered her goats; and others a white kid, and sometimes a boar pig or an ox. Among plants, the poppy and the dittany were sacred to her. Diana, as well as her brother Apollo, had some oracles, among which those of Egypt, Cilicia, and Ephesus, are the best known.