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ELIZABETH KOSMETATOU

University of Illinois–Springfield

Virgin Greek goddess of the hunt and the moon, associated with forests, wild animals, childbirth, fertility, and chastity, daughter of ZEUS and LETO, and twin sister of APOLLO. She may be the goddess that HOMER identifies as potnia therōn, and in the East, including at EPHESUS, she was worshipped as a great mother goddess that was sometimes associated with CYBELE. Indeed, depending on the MYTH, Artemis and Apollo were either born on DELOS or in Ephesus.

Herodotus mentions seven sanctuaries of Artemis. The first features in the SIEGE of Ephesus by CROESUS in 560 BCE (1.26), when the Ephesians dedicated their city to the goddess by tying a rope from her temple to the city wall, a distance of 7 stades (approx. 4,081 feet). Herodotus also identifies the Egyptian Bastet, patroness of BUBASTIS, with Artemis who was honored with a popular FESTIVAL there (2.59, 137). He further associates the sanctuary of HORUS and Bubastis at BUTO with Apollo and Artemis and follows a different mythological tradition on the birth of twin gods than the most prevalent in Greece, according to which the divine twins were children of DIONYSUS and ISIS (or DEMETER according to the Greeks), while Leto (Eg. Wadjet) was only their nurse and savior (2.155–56).

The sanctuary of Artemis in SAMOS is mentioned in connection with an episode of the Corinthian and Spartan expedition against Samos in 525 (3.48; cf. Callim. Hymn 5.225–36). At that time, the tyrant PERIANDER of CORINTH sent 300 sons of CORCYRA’s prominent families through Samos to SARDIS to be castrated, and the Samians saved them by making them SUPPLIANTS through contact with the sacred ground of the sanctuary of Artemis.

Next, Herodotus mentions the Artemision of Delos, which also housed the presumed tomb and cult of the HYPERBOREANS, which is discussed in some detail (4.33–36). It involved a rite of passage performed by boys and girls, who cut off their HAIR in honor of the maidens. Evidence for that RITUAL may be found in the extant Late classical and Hellenistic inventory lists of the Delian Artemision. There are also short references to: the sanctuary of Artemis in BYZANTIUM, where one could see two marble pillars, inscribed in Assyrian and Greek with the names of all peoples that contributed troops to the expedition of DARIUS I against the SCYTHIANS, c. 513 (4.87), as well as the sanctuaries of the goddess in THRACE (5.7) and at BRAURON in Attica (6.138).

SEE ALSO: Artemisium; Egypt; Potniae; Religion, Greek; Temples and Sanctuaries