in the league, until,
instead of being one of its insignificant towns, she was in a fair way
to become its president. Here her diplomacy stepped in to help her. The
league was of course essentially a political institution, but in a
primitive society political institutions are still in tutelage to
religious ones, and the direct road to strong political influence lies
through religious zeal. The way to leadership in the Latin league lay
through excessive devotion to Juppiter and Diana. It is therefore no
accidental coincidence that we find Rome in the period of Servius
building a temple to Juppiter Latiaris on the top of the Alban Mount,
and introducing the worship of Diana into Rome, building her a temple on
the Aventine, hence outside the _pomerium_. Yet it was not the
introduction of her worship as an ordinary state-cult, for then she
would have been taken inside the _pomerium_ with far greater right than
Hercules and Castor were. It was, on the contrary, the building of a
sanctuary of the league outside the _pomerium_, yet inside the civil
wall; not the adoption of Diana as a Roman goddess, but the close
association of the Diana of the Latin league with Rome. It was the
attempt to put Rome religiously as well as politically into the position
which Aricia held; and it was successful. Diana was still the
league-goddess; tradition has it that the league helped to build the
temple; and the dedication day of the temple, August 13, was the same as
that of the temple at Nemi. The Roman temple was outside the _pomerium_
therefore, not because she was a foreign goddess like Minerva, but
because as a league-goddess she must be outside, not inside, the sacred
wall of Rome.

Diana had been introduced for a specific purpose as part of a diplomatic
game, not because Rome felt any real religious need of her; it is hardly
to be expected therefore that her subsequent career in Rome would be of
any great importance. Naturally when once the state had taken the
responsibility of the cult upon itself, that cult was assured as long as
pagan Rome lasted, for the state was always faithful, at least in the
mechanical performance of a ritual act; but popular interest could not
be counted on, especially as many of the things which Diana stood for,
for example her relation to women, were ably represented by Juno. It is
not likely that Diana would ever have been of importance in the religion
of subsequent time, had it not been for another accide