Artemis, Diana
"Artemis was daughter of Zeus and Leto, and sister to Apollo. She was the goddess of the chase; she also presided over health. The sudden deaths of women were ascribed…
From: Unknown To: 1838 C.E.
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“Artemis,” from The Mythology of Ancient Greece and Italy by Thomas Keightley, 1838.
Chapter VIII
Leto:—Phoebos-Apollo, Artemis
Artemis, Diana.
Artemis was daughter of Zeus and Leto, and sister to Apollo. She was the goddess of the chase; she also presided over health. The sudden deaths of women were ascribed to her darts, as those of men were to the arrows of her brother, of whom she forms the exact counterpart. Artemis was a spotless virgin; her chief joy was to speed like a Dorian maid over the hills, followed by a train of nymphs in pursuit of the flying game:
As arrow-joying Artemis along A mountain moves, either Taygetos high, Or Erymanthos, in the chase rejoiced Of boars and nimble deer; and with her sport The country-haunting nymphs, the daughters fair Of AEgis-holding Zeus, while Leto joys; O'er all she high her head and forehead holds, Easy to know, though beautiful are all.
The Homerids have also sung the huntress-goddess: one of them in his hymn to her thus describes her occupations:
Along the shady hills and breezy peaks, Rejoicing in the chase, her golden bow She bends, her deadly arrows sending forth. Then tremble of the lofty hills the tops; The shady wood rebelloweth aloud Unto the bowstring's twang; the earth itself And fishy sea then shudder: but she still A brave heart bearing goeth all around, Slaughtering the race of savage beasts. But when Beast-marking, arrow-loving Artemis Would cheer her soul, relaxing her curved bow She to her brother Phoebos-Apollo's house Ample repaireth, to the fertile land Of Delphi, there to arrange the lovely dance Of Muses and of Graces; then hangs up Her springy bow and arrows, and begins To lead the dance; her body all arrayed In raiment fair. They, pouring forth their voice Divine, sing Leto lovely-ankled, how She brought forth children, 'mid the Deathless far The best in counsel and in numerous deeds. Callimachus thus relates the early history of the goddess.
Artemis while yet a child, as she sat on her father's knee, besought him to grant her permission to lead a life of perpetual virginity, to get a bow and arrows formed by the Cyclopes, and to devote herself to the chase. She further asked for sixty Ocean-nymphs as her companions, and twenty nymphs from Amnisos in Crete as her attendants.
Of towns and cities she required not more than one, satisfied with the mountains, which she never would leave but to aid women in the pains of child-birth. Her indulgent sire assented with a smile, and gave her not one but thirty towns. She speeds to Crete, and thence to Ocean, and selects all her nymphs. On her return she calls at Lipara on Hephaestos and the Cyclopes, who immediately lay aside all their work to execute her orders. She now proceeds to Arcadia, where Pan, the chief god of that country, supplies her with dogs of an excellent breed. Mount Parrhasios then witnessed the first exploit of the huntress-goddess. Five deer larger than bulls, with horns of gold, fed on the banks of the 'dark-pebbled' Anauros at the foot of that hill: of these the goddess unaided by her dogs caught four, which she reserved to draw her chariot: the fifth, destined by Hera for the last labour of Heracles, bounded across the Keladon and escaped.
According to the same poet, the chariot of Artemis and the harness of her deer are all of gold. When she drives to the house of Zeus, the gods come forth to meet her. Hermes takes her bow and arrows, and Apollo used to carry in her game, till Heracles was received into Olympos, when for his strength that office devolved on him. He carries in the bull, or boar, or whatever else she may have brought, exhorting the goddess to let the hares and small game alone, and attach herself to the boars and oxen; for Heracles, the poet observes, though deified, still retains his appetite. The Amnisiades then unyoke her stags, and bring to them from Hera's mead some of the trefoil on which the horses of Zeus feed, and fill their golden troughs with water. The goddess herself meantime enters the house of her father, and sits beside her brother Apollo.
The adventures of Artemis were not numerous. She turned, as we shall relate below, Actaeon into a stag, for having unconsciously beheld her when bathing a . Callisto was changed by her into a bear, for breach of chastity. Orion perished by her arrows . With her brother she destroyed the children of Niobe, who had presumed to prefer herself to Leto d; and in a fable later than Homer she is said to have detained the Grecian fleet at Aulis, in consequence of Agamemnon's having killed a hind which was sacred to her, and to have required the sacrifice of his daughter Iphigeneia. The Aloeids, Otos and Ephialtes, it was said, sought in marriage Hera and Artemis: the latter goddess, changing her form into that of a hind, sprang out between the two brothers, who aiming their darts at the supposed beast, by her art pierced each other and died.
We have already noticed the practice of the Greeks to unite similar deities, or to make one of them principal, and the others companions or attendants; and also to form nymphs and other subordinate beings attached to the service of the gods out of their epithets. Of these practices Artemis furnishes more examples perhaps than any other deity.
The Cretans worshiped a goddess the same as or very similar to Artemis, whom they named Britomartis, which in their dialect signified Sweet Maid. She was also called Dictynna, a goddess of that name, and of a similar nature, having been perhaps united with her. There was a similar deity named Aphrea worshiped at AEgina, and they were all joined in a legend in the following manner.
The Cretan nymph Britomartis, the daughter of Zeus and Charme, was a favourite companion of Artemis. Minos falling in love with her, pursued her for the space of nine months, the nymph at times concealing herself from him amidst the trees, at times among the reeds and sedge of the marshes. At length, being nearly overtaken by him, she sprang from a cliff into the sea, where she was saved in the nets of some fishermen.
The Cretans afterwards worshiped her as a goddess under the name of Dictynna from the above circumstance, which also was assigned as the reason of the cliff from which she threw herself being called Dictaeon. At the rites sacred to her, wreaths of pine or lentisk were used instead of myrtle, as a branch of the latter had caught her garments and impeded her flight. Leaving Crete, Britomartis then sailed for AEgina in a boat: the boatman attempted to offer her violence, but she got to shore and took refuge in a grove on that island, where she became invisible: hence she was worshiped in AEgina under the name of Aphaea.
The well-known legend of Alpheios and Arethusa offers another remarkable instance of this procedure.
Arethusa, it is said, was an Arcadian nymph, and a companion of the huntress-goddess. As she was one day returning from the chase she came to the clear stream of the Alpheios, and enticed by its beauty stripped herself and entered it, to drive away the heat and the fatigue. She heard a murmur in the stream, and terrified sprang to land. The river-god rose: she fled away naked as she was; Alpheios pursued her. She sped all through Arcadia, till with the approach of evening she felt her strength to fail, and saw that her pursuer was close upon her. She then prayed to Artemis for relief, and was immediately dissolved into a fountain. Alpheios resumed his aqueous form, and sought to mingle his waters with hers. She fled on under the earth and through the sea, till she rose in the isle of Ortygia at Syracuse, still followed by the amorous stream.
The explanation of this mythe is as follows. Artemis was worshiped in Elis under the titles of Alpheiaea, Alpheioa, Alpheionia, and Alpheiusa; and there was a common altar to her and Alpheios within the precincts of the Altis at Olympiad. When in the fifth Olympiad Archias the Corinthian founded the colony of Syracuse in Sicily, there were among the colonists some members of the sacerdotal family of the Iamids of Olympiad. These naturally exercised much influence in the religious affairs of the colony, whose first seat was the islet of Ortygia. A temple was built there to Artemis Of-the-Stream, to which perhaps the proximate inducement was the presence of the fount Arethusa, which contained large fishes, and sent forth a copious stream of water into the sea.
From the original connexion between Alpheios and Artemis, the notion gradually arose, or it was given out, that the fount contained water of the Alpheios, and thence came the legend of his course under the seas. Eventually, when the poetic notion of Artemis as a love-shunning maiden became the prevalent one, the goddess was made to fly the pursuit of Alpheios. The legend at Letrini was that he fell in love with her, but seeing no chance of success in a lawful way he resolved to force her. For this purpose he came to Letrini, where she and her nymphs were celebrating a pannychis or wake, and mingled with them.
But the goddess, suspecting his design, had daubed her own face and those of her nymphs with mud, so that he was unable to distinguish her, and thus was foiled. Finally she was converted into the coy nymph Arethusa. A late pragmatising form of the pleasing mythe was that Alpheios was a hunter who was in love with the huntress Arethusa. To escape from his importunities she passed over to Ortygia, where she was changed into a fountain, and Alpheios became a river.
In proof of the truth of this fable, it was asserted that a cup which fell into the Alpheios rose in Arethusa, whose pellucid waters also became turbid with the blood of the victims slain at the Olympic games.
We may here observe, that in the Peloponnese the relation between Artemis and the water was very intimate. She was worshiped in several places as Limnatis and Heleia, and there were frequently fountains in her temples. She was therefore probably regarded as a goddess of nature, that gave vigour and growth to plants and animals by the means of water.
Among the various titles of Artemis were Loxo, Hecaerge, Arge, and Opis, or Upis. She bore the two first as the sister of Apollo Loxias and Hecaergos. She was styled Arge as the swift or the bright goddess, and Upis or Opis as her whose eye was over all. In the isle of Delos however were shown the tombs of Opis and Arge behind the temple of Artemis, and the tradition of the place was, that they, who were two Hyperborean maidens, had been the companions of Apollo and Artemis when they first came to Delos.
According to another account, these Hyperborean maidens were three in number, and named Upis, Loxo, and Hecaerge, while a third named only Opis and Hecaerge. There was also a legend of a nymph Arge, who when pursuing a buck cried out to him, "Though you should follow the course of the Sun I will overtake you,” at which the Sun being offended, turned her into a doe. Another legend said that Zeus carried away the nymph Arge from Lyctos in Crete to a hill named Argillos on the banks of the Nile, where she became the mother of Dionysos.
If Artemis was merely one of the names under which the moon was worshiped, it need not surprise us to find her identified with Selene, with Hecate, and even with Persephone, the goddess of the under-world, and to be thence called the three-formed goddess, ruling as Selene in the sky, as Artemis on earth, as Persephone in Erebos. This will also give a very simple reason for her being like Eileithyia, the aider of women in labour. If Artemis was not originally a moon-goddess, these identifications become somewhat difficult of solution.
Artemis was also confounded with the goddess worshiped on the Tauric Chersonese, whose altars were stained with the blood of such unhappy strangers as were cast on that inhospitable shore. She was identified too with the goddess of nature adored at Ephesus, whose symbolical figure, by its multitude of breasts and heads of animals hung round it, denoted the fecundity of nature. In Magnesia on the Maeander there was a most stately temple of Artemis-Leucophryne (White-browed), in which was shown the tomb of a maiden named Leucophryne, who was probably regarded as bearing a relation to the goddess similar to that borne by Upis and Arge at Delos.
Leucophryne was therefore no more than an epithet of Artemis, who had also a temple at Leucophrys on the coast; and it becomes a question whether (like Artemis of Ephesus, with whom she must have been identical)she derived her appellation from that town, whose name probably corresponded with its situation on a chalk cliff; or whether it was expressive of her beauty. As however beauty was not an attribute of the Asiatic goddess, the former is more likely to be the true supposition.
No spot on earth is assigned as the birth-place of Artemis by Homer, in whose time, as we have more than once observed, that practice had not yet commenced; but as he mentions the island Ortygia as that in which she shot Orion, succeeding poets fabled that she was born there. This island was described by Homer as lying in the western sea, the scene of all wonders, and was probably as imaginary as Ogygia, that of Calypso; but when at a later period the Greeks grew more familiar with those distant regions, zeal for the honour of the poet who had sung so well the wanderings of Odysseus, and the love of definiteness, led them to affix the names which he employs to various places really to be found, and the islet at the mouth of the port of Syracuse was determined to be the Ortygia of the Odyssey.
Artemis is generally represented as a healthy, strong, active maiden,—handsome, but with no gentleness of expression. She wears the Cretan hunting-shoes, and has her garment tucked up for speed. On her back she bears a quiver, and in her hand a bow or a hunting-spear. She is usually attended by a dog.
At Troezen there was a temple of Artemis-Lycsea, the erection of which was ascribed to Hippolytos, but the guides could give Pausanias no account of the unusual title Lycaea. Another ambiguous name of this goddess was that of Tauropolos.
The chief titles given to Artemis by the poets were 1. Arrow-joying; 2. Gold-bridled; 3. Gold-shafted; 4. Deerslayer; 5. Beast-marking; 6. Rushing; 7. Holy; 8. Horse-urger, etc.
The name Artemis seems identical with integer, whole, uninjured, and therefore sound and pure, probably with reference to the virginity of the goddess. Welcker regards it as an epithet of the same nature with Opis and Nemesis.
Mythologists are divided into two parties respecting the original nature of Leto and her children, the one regarding them as physical, the other as moral beings. Both however are agreed that the latter is their character in the Homeric and Hesiodic poetry, where, as we have seen, Apollo appears only as the god of prophecy, music and archery, and Artemis as his counterpart in this last office. Voss therefore maintains such to have been the original conception of these deities, while Heyne, Buttmann and Welcker, together with Creuzer and the whole body of the mystics, think that in the theocrasy of the ancients, by which Apollo and Artemis were identified with Helios and Selene, they were only restored to their original nature and character. We have more than once hinted our inclination to regard this last as the more correct hypothesis. We will now briefly state the principal arguments on both sides.
In favour of the theory of Apollo and Artemis being sun and moon, it is alleged that they were early so considered. Thus we find the Persian general of Darius sparing the isle of Delos on their account, and making offerings to them evidently as gods of the two great luminaries (Mithras and Mitra in the Persian system). We also meet this view in Plato and Euripides; and in the Alexandrine period it was so prevalent, that Callimachus blames those who separate these deities from the sun and moon. This however might have been nothing more than the arbitrary procedure of priests and philosophers, and more sure grounds must be sought in the attributes and epithets of these deities anterior to the time of theocrasy.
Apollo and Artemis then are brother and sister, the children of Zeus (that is the deity)and Leto, whose name, by a perfectly unstrained etymology, may be rendered Night; and the origin of the sun and moon, and their affinity, could not be more appropriately described. Apollo is represented as full of manly vigour, with long unshorn locks, armed with a golden sword and a bow and quiver, from which he sends forth deadly arrows. These waving locks are a simple representation of the beams of the sun, who in the Psalms is described as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoicing to run his race; a golden sword is the weapon of Freyr, the sun-god of Scandinavian mythology; and the arrows may well express the penetrating beams of the sun or the coups de soleil and diseases caused by his action. For a similar reason arrows were given to the goddess of the moon.
The names Phoebos and Artemis, as above explained, agree perfectly with the sun and moon. Apollo being conceived armed with bow and arrows, was naturally held to be the god of archery; and the sun, whose eye surveys everything, might be looked on as the most suitable revealer of the will of Zeus to men, and thence Apollo be the god of prophecy. The cheerfulness which the appearance of the sun induces over all nature, vivified and refreshed by the repose of the night, and the songs of birds which precede or accompany his rising, might easily cause the sun-god to be regarded as the god of music, though it is more likely that Apollo owes this character to the employment of the lyre in his worship.
Artemis may in like manner have been regarded as the goddess of the chase from her being armed with arrows, or as the beasts of venery feed by night and sleep by day, or as the moon-goddess was held to preside over the birth and growth of animated beings. Finally, the offering of ripe ears of corn, the golden summer, to Apollo, and his being prayed to as the averter of mildew and the destroyer of mice and grasshoppers, are reasons for viewing him as a god of nature .
Against all this it is alleged that these identifications were merely the work of the philosophers of the Ionic school, who sought to assimilate all the deities of the popular creed with material powers or the attributes of the universal intellect; that the epithets and attributes of Apollo all answer to a moral being of great purity, while the bow and arrows are a natural symbol of the god who sends death from afar; that nothing can be concluded from his being a patron and protector of agriculture, as he is such as the averter of misfortune in general; that in his religious character he is no god of nature, not being a deity of generation and production, but represented as ever youthful and unmarried, the tales of his amours being all of a late age, and having no connexion with his worship. Finally, great stress is laid on the fact of Apollo and Artemis being so totally distinct from the sun and moon in all the elder poetry.
Keightley, Thomas. The Mythology of Ancient Greece and Italy. Whittaker, 1838.
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