Abstract

The essay takes its cue from the innovation that Euripides introduces into the mythological tradition with the plot of Iphigenia in Tauris, in order to reconstruct the way and the sense in which, through deviations and new variants, the myth of Orestes and Iphigenia lands in Latium: in the cult of the sanctuary of Nemi, Iphigenia becomes a figure of the goddess herself and the story of Orestes becomes the first matrix of the rex fugitivus of the Nemorensis rite. Octavian retrieves from the mythological plot the profile of Orestes as a hero who, on Apollo’s orders, avenges his father. This is the most ideological use of the Orestes myth or, rather, of that segment of the myth that the princeps was interested in enhancing. On the basis of this reconstruction, it is likely that the rebirth of the sanctuary of the Diana nemorensis can be attributed to Augustus. And it is therefore with Augustus that the last stage of the mythological pilgrimage of Orestes, with the corollary of the transport of his bones from Nemi to Rome, produces an outcome of exceptional symbolic relevance