Prayer to Diana

Horace dedicates to Diana the pine that overhangs his farmhouse.

Eight lines, and they contain the complete votive procedure: name the deity by all three of her names ("threefold goddess"), state the grounds of honour (you hear women in labour and snatch them from death), declare the object dedicated, and fix the term of performance.

The last detail is remarkable. The boar is promised while "pondering a slanting stroke" — verris obliquom meditantis ictum: the animal is shown at the very moment of swinging its tusk upward and sideways. In promising a victim Horace describes not a carcass but a living beast in motion.

The rite itself is private and cheap: not a temple but a tree by the house; not a hecatomb but one boar a year. Domestic cult in its pure form.