ARTEMIS (ahr'te-mis), one of the principal goddesses in Greek mythology, the counterpart of the Roman Diana (q.v.). In Homer, she is the daughter of Zeus and Leto, twin-sister and counterpart of Apollo. She is said to have been born a day before him (on the 6th of the month) and tradition assigns them different birthplaces—Delos to Apollo, Ortygia to Artemis. But the name Ortygia ("home of quails") applies still to Delos, and may well have been a synonym for that island.
Artemis is the goddess of chastity, the protectress of young men and maidens, who defies and contemns the power of Aphro dite. Like her brother, armed with bow and arrows, she deals death to mortals, sometimes gently and suddenly, especially to women, but also as a punishment for offences against herself or morality. With him she takes part in the combat with Python and with Tityus, in the slaughter of the children of Niobe, while alone she executes vengeance on Orion (q.v.). She is not only a goddess who deals death, but is also, like Apollo, a healing and a purifying divinity, Oulia ("the healer," cf. Apollo Oulios), Luaia ("puri fier") and Soteira, "she who saves from all evils." Her connexion with the prophetic art is doubtful, although mention is made of an Artemis Sibylla. To her association with Apollo are certainly to be referred the names Delphinia and Pythia, and titles referring to state and family life. It probably accounts for her appearance as a goddess of seafarers, the bestower of fair weather and prosperous voyages.
It is in the Arcadian and Athenian rites and legends, however, which are certainly earlier than Homer, that the original con ception of the goddess is to be found. These tend to show that Artemis was first and foremost a nature goddess, whose cult shows numerous traces of totemism. As a goddess of fertilizing moisture, lakes, rivers, springs and marshy lowlands are brought into close connexion with her. Thus, she is Limnaia ("lady of the lake"), Heleia ("of marshes"), Potamia ("of rivers" especially of the Alpheus, whence her name Alpheiaia). Her influence is very active in promoting the increase of the fruits of the field, hence she is specially a goddess of agriculture. She drives away the mice (cf. Apollo Smintheus) and slays the Aloidae (q.v.), the corn spirits; she is the friend of the reapers, and requires her share of the first-fruits. Her character as a harvest goddess is shown in the legend of the Calydonian boar, sent by her to ravage the fields in resentment at not having received a harvest offering from Oeneus (see MELEAGER). As Epimulios and Epiklibanios ("presiding over the mill and the oven") she extends her pro tection over the further development of the grain for the use of man.
Artemis was naturally also a goddess of trees and vegetation. Near Orchomenus her wooden image stood in a large cedar-tree an indication that her worship was originally that of the tree itself (Kedreatis, "the cedar goddess") ; at Caryae there was an image of Artemis, Karuatis ("the nut-tree goddess") . Two curious epithets deserve notice, Lugodesma ("bound with withies"), de rived from the legend that the image of Artemis Orthia ("up right") was found in a thicket of withies, which twined round it and kept it upright (logos is the agnus castes, and points to Artemis in her rela tion to women) ; and Apangchomene ("the suspended") probably a reference to the custom of hanging the mask or image of a vegetation-divinity on a tree to obtain fertility (cf. the Aiora, "swing" festival of the Greeks and the oscilla of the Romans).
The functions of the goddess extended from the vegetable to the animal world, to the inhabitants of the woods and moun tains. This is clearly expressed in the cult of Artemis Laphria (possibly connected with laphura "spoils"), at whose festivals all kinds of animals, both wild and tame, as well as fruits, were thrown together on a huge wood fire. Her general name in this connexion was Agrotera ("roaming the wilds"), to whom soo goats were offered every year by the Athenians as a thanksgiving in commemoration of the victory at Marathon. It has been observed that she is rather the patroness of the wild beasts of the field than of the more agricultural or domestic ani mals, although the epithet, Hemerasia ("the tamer"), seems to refer to her connexion with the latter. The bear was especially associated with her in Arcadia, and in her worship as Artemis Brauronia at Brauron in Attica. According to the legend, Callisto (q.v.), an Arcadian nymph, became by Zeus the mother of Arcas, the eponymous hero of the Arcadians. Zeus, to conceal the amour, changed Callisto into a she-bear; Hera, however, discovered it, and persuaded Artemis to slay Callisto, who was placed amongst the stars as Arktos ("the bear"). There is no doubt that Callisto is identical with Artemis; her name is an obvious variation of Kalliste ("most beautiful"), a frequent epithet of the goddess.
Closely connected with this legend is the worship of Artemis Brauronia. The accounts of its institution agree that it was in tended to appease the wrath of the goddess aroused by the killing of a bear. A number of young girls, between five and ten years of age, wearing bear-skins (afterwards saffron-coloured robes) danced a bear dance, the girls themselves being called bears. In one account a maiden was ordered to be sacrificed to the bear Artemis, but a certain man who had a goat called it his daughter and offered it up in secret, just as at Munychium a fawn dressed up as a girl was sacrificed to the goddess. In place of the goat or fawn a bear might have been expected, but the choice may have been influenced by the animal totem of the tribe into whose hands the ritual fell. The whole is a reminiscence of earlier times, when the goddess herself was a bear, to whom human sacrifice was offered. Callisto was originally a bear-goddess, worshipped in Arcadia, identified with Artemis, when nothing remained of the original animal-worship but name and ritual. Various explanations have been given of the epithet Orthia: (z) that it refers to the primitive type of the "erect" wooden idol; (2) that it means "she who safely rears children after birth," or "heals the sick"; (3) that it has a phallic significance.
The protecting influence of Artemis was extended to man. She was especially concerned in the bringing up of the young. Boys were brought by their nurses to the temple of Artemis Kouro trophos ("rearer of boys") and there consecrated to her. At the Apaturia (q.v.), on the day called Koureotis, boys cut off and dedicated their hair to her. Girls as well as boys were under her protection. Her function as a goddess of marriage is less certain, but her connexion with child-birth is clearly shown; in many places she is even called Eilithuia (goddess of child-birth), who in the earlier poets was regarded as distinct from her. Women in child-birth invoked her aid, and after delivery offered up their clothes or a lock of hair. As already noticed, in Homer Artemis appears as a goddess of death; closely akin to this is the con ception of her as a goddess of war.
The idea of Artemis as a virgin goddess, the "queen and huntress, chaste and fair," which attained great prominence in early times, and seems inconsistent with her association with child-birth, is generally explained as due to her connection with Apollo, but it is suggested by Farnell that Parthenos originally meant "unmarried," and that "Artemis Parthenos originally may have been the goddess of a people who had not yet the advanced Hellenic institutions of settled marriage ... and when society de veloped the later family system the goddess remained celibate, though not opposed to childbirth." There is no trace of Artemis as a moon-goddess in the epic period, and the Homeric hymn knows nothing of her identification with Selene. The attribute of the torch will apply equally well to the goddess of the chase, and epithets such as "light-giving" al though applicable, are by no means convincing. The idea dates from the 5th century, and was due to her connexion with Hecate and Apollo (q.v.). When the latter came to be identified by philosophical speculation with the sun-god Helios, it was natural that his sister and counterpart should be identified with the moon goddess Selene. But she is nowhere recognized in cult as such.
Various non-Hellenic divinities were identified with Artemis, and their cult gradually amalgamated with hers. The most im portant of these was Artemis of Ephesus who, like the Greek Artemis, was essentially a nature goddess, the great foster-mother of the vegetable and animal kingdom. Her chief festival, Ephesia or Artemisia, was held in the spring, at which games and various contests took place after the Greek fashion, although the ritual continued to be of a modified oriental, orgiastic type. This goddess is closely connected with the Amazons (q.v.), who are said to have built her temple and set up her image in the trunk of a tree. The Greeks of Ephesus identified her with their own Artemis and claimed that her birthplace Ortygia was near Ephesus, not in Delos. She has much in common with the oriental prototype of Aphrodite, and the Cappadocian goddess Ma, another form of Cybele. The usual figure of the Ephesian Artemis, which was said in the first instance to have fallen from heaven, is in the form of a female with many breasts, the symbol of productivity or a token of her function as the all-nourishing mother. From the waist to the feet her image resembles a pillar, narrowing down wards and sculptured all round with rows of animals (lions, rams and bulls).
Among the chief attributes of Artemis are : the hind, specially regarded as her sacred animal; the bear, the boar and the goat; the lion, one of her oldest animal symbols ; bow and arrows, as goddess of the chase and death; a mural crown, as the protectress of cities; the torch, originally an attribute of the goddess of the chase or marriage, but, like the crescent (originally an attribute of the Asiatic nature goddesses), transferred to Artemis when she came to be regarded as a moon-goddess. The Greek Artemis was usually represented as a huntress with bow and quiver or torch in her hand, in face very like Apollo, her drapery flowing to her feet, or more frequently, girt high for speed. She is accompanied often by a deer or a dog. Perhaps the finest existing statue of her is the Diana of Versailles from Hadrian's Villa (now in the Louvre), in which she wears a short tunic drawn in at the waist and sandals on her feet ; her hair is bound up into a knot at the back of her head, with a band over the forehead. With her left hand she holds a stag, while with the right she is drawing an arrow from the quiver on her shoulder. Another famous statue is one from Gabii, in which she is finishing her toilet and fastening the chlamys over her tunic.
In older times her figure is fuller and stronger, and the clothing more complete; certain statues discovered at Delos, imitated from wooden models (xoana), are supposed to represent Artemis; they are described as stiff and rigid, the limbs as it were glued to the body without life or movement, garments closely fitting, the folds of which fall in symmetrical parallel lines. As a goddess of the moon she wears a long robe, carries a torch, and her head is surmounted by a crescent.