Ancient Sources
The tale of the rex Nemorensis is told in a number of ancient sources. Ovid gives a poetic account of the priesthood of Nemi in his Fasti, Book 3 (on the month of March), noting that the lake of Nemi was "sacred to antique religion," and that the priest who dwelt there "holds his reign by strong hands and fleet feet, and dies according to the example he set himself." The Latin name of the priesthood is given by Suetonius: "He caused the rex Nemorensis, who had held his priesthood for many years, to be supplanted by a stronger adversary." That same passage indicates that by the time of the early principate the custom of choosing the office-holder's successor by combat had fallen into disuse.
The Greek geographer Strabo also mentions the institution: "and in fact a barbaric, and Scythian, element predominates in the sacred usages, for the people set up as priest merely a run-away slave who has slain with his own hand the man previously consecrated to that office; accordingly the priest is always armed with a sword, looking around for the attacks, and ready to defend himself."
Pausanias gives an etiological myth on the founding of the shrine:
| “ | The Aricians tell a tale … that when Hippolytus (the son of Theseus) was killed, owing to the curses of Theseus, Asclepius raised him from the dead. On coming to life again he refused to forgive his father; rejecting his prayers, he went to the Aricians in Italy. There he became king and devoted a precinct to Artemis, where down to my time the prize for the victor in single combat was the priesthood of the goddess. The contest was open to no freeman, but only to slaves who had run away from their masters." | ” |
In Roman mythology, Hippolytus was deified as the god Virbius; Artemis was the Greek name of the goddess identified with the Roman Diana. A possible allusion to the origins of the priesthood at Nemi is contained in Vergil's Aeneid, as Virgil places Hippolytus at the grove of Aricia.
An alternative story has the worship of Diana at Nemi instituted by Orestes; the flight of the slave represents the flight of Orestes into exile.
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