"May you [#Luna-Selene the Moon] wear a shining face and, the clouds all scattered, fare on with undimmed horns; when you drive your car through the nightly skies."
Seneca, Phaedra 417 ff
🏛️ #Selene in her chariot drawn by bulls across the sky, about 1st CE, British Museum
Sculpture of #Selene carved from a cylinder of coarse-grained marble. It shows no traces of reworking. The right hand, which may have held a torch, is missing. She probably adorned a sanctuary, perhaps a domestic one.
Full description in the alt text.
🏛️ Statue of Selene, white marble (Proconnesio), dated 250-300 CE
"As wind rises, golden Phoebe [Luna-Selene] ever blushes. But if at her fourth rising--for that is our surest guide--she pass through the sky clear and with undimmed horns, then all that day, and the days born of it to the month's end, shall be free from rain and wind."
Virgil, Georgics 1. 426
🏛️ Roman oil lamp decorated with the goddess #Luna
#Diana-Selene wears a crescent-moon ornament in her hair and a torch in her right hand, attributes characteristic of the moon goddess. The statue has been found near the Porta San Sebastiano.
🏛️ #Selene, 1st century CE, Musei Capitolini: Palazzo Nuovo, #Rome
"The Astera (Stars) hide away their shining form around lovely #Selene (the Moon) when in all her fullnesss she shines over all the earth." #Sappho, Fragment 34
🏛️ Luna-Selene, relief on the pediment at the Roman Baths
"Swelled like young Mene's the [#Moon's] arching chariot-rail when high over Okeanos' fathomless-flowing stream she rises, with the space half filled with light between her bowing horns."
Quintus Smyrnaeus, Fall of Troy 1.147
🏛️ #Fresco on the facade of the House of Venus and the Four Gods (IX. 7. 1), 1st century CE, Pompeii
Mould-made oil lamp with a circular body and a pierced handle. On the discus is a draped bust of Luna with the horns of a crescent #moon rising on each side of her.
🏛️ Roman oil lamp made by C. Atilius Vestalis, dated 90-140 CE. Today in the British Museum.