The Anathemata
Sherthursdaye and Venus day (continued)
Had she been on Ariel mountain
would Selene
the Slumberera have refused
preferring, preferring
this Jugatinus of the noose, yoked for his nuptials on Skull Ridge?1
David Jones notes
1 See England’s Helicon (1600) Phyllida’s Love Call, verse 5.
‘Had my lovely one, my lovely one,
Been in Ida plain—
Cynthia Endymion had refused,
Preferring, preferring
My Corydon to play withal.’
And cf. where in The City of God, Bk. IV, 11, Augustine refers to Jugatinus as one of gods of hill-sites, and in Bk. VI, 9, to Jugatinus the conjugal god.
additional notes
DJ note 1: DJ is, I think, incorrect (or possibly misleading) here. On both occasions Augustine is ridiculing the multiplicity of Roman gods, and Jugatinus is a fictional example of such multiplicity. Jugatinus does not appear in the Roman pantheon anywhere else.
a Selene was the Greek goddess of the moon. Her great love was the shepherd prince Endymion. The beautiful boy was granted eternal youth and immortality by Zeus and placed in a state of eternal slumber in a cave near the peak of Lydian Mount Latmos. There his heavenly bride descended to consort with him in the night.
see also
For Ariel mountain see page 187 note 3.
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