Αρτεμις
Identified by the Romans with the Italian and Latin Diana. Although she is sometimes said to have been the daughter of Demeter, she is generally regarded as the twin sister of Apollo, their parents being Zeus and Leto. Artemis, the elder twin, was born in Delos and as soon as she was born she helped her mother to give birth to her brother. Artemis was always a virgin and eternally young, an untamed girl with no interests beyond hunting. Like her brother, her weapon was the bow which she used while she was hunting stags as well as mortals, and she inflicted pain on women who died in childbirth. Her arrows were said to inflict sudden death, especially when they caused no pain. She was vindictive and there were many who suffered from her anger. One of her first actions, together with her brother, was to kill the children of Niobe. While Apollo was killing the six boys in turn when he hunted on Mount Cithaeron, Artemis was killing the six daughters who had stayed at home. They took this action out of love for their mother, who had been insulted by Niobe and it was in defence of Leto again that Artemis and Apollo, though scarcely born, killed the dragon which had come to attack them; in the same way they attacked and killed Tityus, who was trying to violate Leto.
Artemis took part in the battle against the Giants, where her opponent was the giant Gration whom she killed with the help of Heracles. She destroyed two other monsters in the shape of the Aloadae and is said to have killed the monster Bouphagus (the eater of oxen) in Arcadia. Other victims of Artemis included Orion, the giant huntsman. The reasons which drove her to kill him differ in various traditions. In come accounts he is said to have incurred her wrath by challenging her at throwing the discus and in others by trying to kidnap Opis, one of her companions whom she had forced to leave his home with the Hyperboreans. In still other accounts, Orion is supposed to have tried to ravish Artemis herself and she sent a scorpion which bit and killed him. Actaeon, the son of Aristaeus, who was another hunter, owed his death to the wrath of Artemis, and she was the instigator of the hunt for the wild boar of Calydon, which was fated to lead to the death of the huntsman Meleager. Artemis sent the wild boar of exceptional size to Oeneus' country because he had forgotten to sacrifice to her when he was offering the first fruits of his crops to all the gods and goddesses. Artemis is sometimes said to have been responsible for the death of Callisto whom she killed with an arrow either at Hera's request or as a punishment for having let herself be seduced by Zeus; Callisto was then changed into a she-bear. All these legends relate to hunting, giving a picture of a ferocious goddess of the woods and mountains, who usually kept company with wild beasts.
An account of the Labours of Heracles tells how he had been ordered by Eurystheus to bring back the stag with the golden horns which was sacred to Artemis. Unwilling either to wound or to kill the sacred beast Heracles pursued it for a whole year but ultimately he became exhausted and killed it. Immediately Artemis and Apollo appeared before him, asking for an explanation. Heracles managed to appease them by blaming Eurystheus for the hunt. The same theme recurs in the story of Iphigenia: the wrath of Artemis against the family was already of long standing (see Atreus) but it was renewed by an unfortunate utterance of Agamemnon who after hunting and killing a stag when he was waiting at Aulis for a favourable wind to enable him to leave for Troy, cried out: 'Artemis herself could not have killed a stag like that'. Artemis promptly sent a calm which kept the whole fleet from sailing and the soothsayer Tiresias disclosed the reason for this setback, adding that the only remedy was to sacrifice Iphigenia, the king's virgin daughter, to Artemis. Artemis would not have this sacrifice and at the last minute she substituted a doe for the girl, removed her and took her away to Tauris (the modern Crimea) to serve as the priestess of her cult in that distant land.
Artemis was held in honour in all the wild and mountainous areas of Greece, in Arcadia and in the country of Sparta, in Laconia on the mountain of Taygetus and in Elis. Her most famous shrine in the Greek world was the one at Ephesus, where she was integrated with a very ancient Asiatic fertility goddess. Antiquity explained Artemis as a personification of the Moon which roams in the mountains and her brother Apollo was also generally regarded as a personification of the Sun, but not all the Artemis cults had lunar significance, furthermore the goddess took the place of the Lady of the Wild Beasts displayed on Cretan religious monuments in the Hellenic Pantheon. Artemis absorbed some barbarous cults which involved human sacrifice such as that practiced in Tauris. (See Amphisthenes.) Artemis was also the protecting deity of the Amazons who were warriors and huntresses like her and resembled her too in being independent of men. For her relationship with magic, see Hecate.
{E2 DICTIONARY OF CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY}
Table of Sources:
- Hom. Il. 21, 470ff.
- Hesiod, Theog. 918
- Homeric Hymn to Artemis
- Apollod. Bibl. 1, 4, 1; 1, 6, 2; 1, 7, 5; 1, 4, 3; 3, 4, 3; 3, 8, 2
- Hom. Od. 5, 121ff.
- Paus. 8, 27, 17; etc.
- Euripides, IT; LA
- Callim. Hymn 3
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ARTEMIS
(ahr' tuh muhs) GREEK: ARTEMIS
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The Greek goddess Artemis, known to the Romans as Diana, was celebrated in mythology as the daughter of Zeus and the sister of Apollo. As goddess of the hunt, she is often pictured with bow and arrow. In Ephesus, however, she was worshipped as a fertility goddess and depicted in a static pose with multiple breasts. This image was repeated with little variation wherever the cult of the Ephesian Artemis existed, and numerous copies statues have been found.
When Paul was in Ephesus, he came in conflict with the silversmiths who made images of the Ephesian Artemis because his success in converting the populace to Christianity was hurting their business. They became enraged and dragged Gaius and Aristarchus, two of Paul's companions, into the theater, threatening them with bodily harm. Had not his prudent friends restrained him, Paul would have joined the pair in confronting the mob. Finally quieted by the town clerk, who warned them that they were "in danger of being charged with rioting" (Acts 19:40), the silversmiths dispersed and there the matter ended.
{E2 Dictionary of Biblical People}