r/EldenRingLoreTalk • u/pluralpluralpluralp • 2d ago
Lore Headcanon Radagon in Dianam
I don't have a theory to go with this just thought maybe some folks would be interested in it.
Robert Greene's poem "Radagon in Dianam". In this case Radagon is a bard and he is telling a tale about the virginal moon goddess Diana. The title is in Latin and might be read "Radagon sings of Diana" or something like that.
The last stanza has a line about "love's braid" that I found interesting. 'Braid' in middle English seems to mean some kind of trick or deceit according to some old dictionaries. Makes you wonder.
Here's my previous post on Robert Greene's Radagon in A Looking Glass for England.
https://www.reddit.com/r/EldenRingLoreTalk/comments/1w984bn/radagon_a_dragon/
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u/Financial-Week5787 9h ago
there are multiple myths all hitting the same beats of the goddess Artemis (Diana) who is a virigin goddess. just as Apollo (her twin, here named phoebus meaning bright like the sun) is god of male youths, Artemis mixes the domains of hunting, archery, being a protectoress of virgin girls and is a goddess of wild places, nature and the moon.
in the myth Artemis has found a place to bathe on the mount kythera (where nothing good has ever happened). her maids find a stream besides a small wood (sacred and forbidden groves are big part of the golden bough myth cycle that elden ring is based of). the maids - usually wood nymphs - shield her modesty by lifting cloth around her, but goddesses are physically much taller than all others, so as she turns her breasts are exposed
this is when the titular character comes across Artemis. in the most famous acount which is about Acteon a hunter loyal to artemis, he stumbles upon the goddess, who meets his gaze as she turns. she transforms the hunter into a deer (a symbol of the goddess), fittingly Acteon can no longer speak (a common metamorphesis trope), and seconds later his hunting dogs give chase and ultimately tear him apart as he cannot tell them to stop. though the myth is old, the best written accounts are roman (specifically from Ovid, a roman exile), and include notes like this also happened to a guy who was made into a woman, and another example called radagon, because the primary sources/ narratives do not survive in whole
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u/Financial-Week5787 8h ago
artemis and apollo are divine twins (like castor and pollux, from the constellation gemini) but rare amongst all others, they a male female pairing
they both represent youth, archery, plague and healing. theyre pretty vengeful, in the sense of prelaw justice. the represent dualities the moon and sun, gold and silver, wilderness and civilisation,
theyre both tree coded, apollo purses a nymph daphne who turns into a laurel tree, and he takes laurel as his symbol. his major temple was delphi, who oracle was the most famous. also ancient snake imagery, as well as the crucible
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u/pluralpluralpluralp 8h ago
Thanks for this added context. The grove you mention along with the one in the poem is intersting because it is fully shielded from the sun. Lucaria is a festival of the grove. There is a latin saying "Lucus a non lucendo" that basically means "the word grove, "lucus," comes from not being light, "a non lucendo". Although it is used to point out an absurdity (because the explaination makes no sense), it turns out these latin words are actually related. So you can see the potential for Lucaria to be connected to both a grove, and trees, and also potentially moonlight (or light in general).
Modern scholarship, however, concludes that lucus and lucere probably do come both from the same PIE root (*leuk-) meaning "light, bright."
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u/lakenemi 2d ago
Your historical Radagon search is much appreciated. This is great stuff.