Nenia Dea

Temple of the Dii Inferi

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Introduction

Nenia Dea (Engl.: Goddess Nenia; rarely Naenia) was an ancient funeral deity of Rome, who had a sanctuary outside of the Porta Viminalis. The cult of the Nenia is doubtlessly a very old one, but according to Georg Wissowa the location of Nenia's shrine (sacellum) outside of the center of early Rome indicates that she didn't belong to the earliest circle of Roman deities. In a different interpretation her shrine was located outside of the old city walls, because it had been custom for all gods connected to death or dying.

Goddess of the Roman funerary lament

Nenia shares her name with the nenia that sometimes took the meaning of carmen funebre ("dirge"), and Marcus Terentius Varro regarded the Nenia Dea as a personification of the funerary lament's protective power. She was therefore a goddess also connected to the end of a person's life. Varro assigned the Nenia Dea to a polar position with respect to the god Ianus, which was probably inspired by one of the ancient Roman etymologies of the word nenia, defining it as nenia finis ("end", fig.: "finale").

Arnobius places men who are near to death under Nenias care. Although Arnobius' writings are mainly influenced by Cornelius Labeo, the identification of Nenia as the goddess of human transience here also suggests a Varronian origin. It is unclear whether Tertullian referred to the Nenia Dea when he wrote about the "goddess of death herself". Whether the worship of Nenia herself was part of the last rites is uncertain. However, Lucius Afranius clearly associates the term nenia (i.e. the funeral song) with the obsequies.

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nenia_Dea