Artemis, Goddess of Chastity, the Hunt & The Wilds, Protector of Children and Small Furry Animals

Name: Artemis. Her chosen nickname is Arte.

She is goddess of the hunt, and the wilds. She is also the protector of children and small furry animals, although she does care for other suckling animals too. Artemis is the lady of the wild things. She is the huntsman of the gods. She is the protector of the young. Like Apollo she hunts with silver arrows. She became associated with the moon. She is a virgin goddess, and the goddess of chastity. She also presides over childbirth, which may seem odd for a virgin, but goes back to causing Leto no pain when she was born.

Artemis loves to hunt and she is the lady of the forest and all the wild things, as well as the Huntsman-in-chief to the gods, an unusual position for a woman.

She became a goddess of fertility and childbirth mainly in cities. She was often depicted with the crescent of the moon above her forehead and was sometimes identified with Selene (goddess of the moon).

She was also the protecting deity of the Amazons who, like her, were warriors and huntresses and independent of men.

Being a goddess of contradictions, she was the protectress of women in labor, but it was said that the arrows of Artemis brought them sudden death while giving birth. As was her brother, Apollo, Artemis was a divinity of healing.

Direct Family:

Father - Zeus
Mother - Leto
Twin Brother - Apollo

Appearance: Tall and beautiful. However, she does not like being seen nude and has killed mortals who have. Her own priestesses are safe from that though. She so hates it that she would slap her father, Zeus, if he did.

Artemis is generally depicted as a young woman clad in buckskins, carrying a bow and a quiver of arrows. She is often accompanied by wild creatures such as a stag or she-bear.

She wears togas and dresses as well, and sometimes, more revealing clothing.

Personality:  She is a friend to mortals, and dances through the countryside in her silver sandals giving her divine protection to the wild beasts, particularly the very young. She rides her silver chariot across the sky and shoots her arrows of silver Moonlight to the earth below.

She, like the other Olympians, has favorites among the mortals but she could not protect the fine huntsman, Skamandros, from the spear of Menelaos at the battle for Troy.

Artemis was very possessive. She would show her wrath on anyone who disobeyed her wishes, especially against her sacred animals. Even the great hero Agamemnon came upon the wrath of Artemis, when he killed a stag in her sacred grove. His punishment came when his ships were becalmed, while he made his way to besiege Troy. With no winds to sail his ships he was told by the seer Calchas that the only way Artemis would bring back the winds was for him to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia. Some versions say he did sacrifice Iphigenia, others that Artemis exchanged a deer in her place, and took Iphigenia to the land of the Tauri (the Crimea) as a priestess, to prepare strangers for sacrifice to Artemis.

Artemis with her twin brother, Apollo, put to death the children of Niobe. The reason being that Niobe, a mere mortal, had boasted to Leto, the mother of the divine twins, that she had bore more children, which must make her superior to Leto. Apollo being outraged at such an insult on his mother, informed Artemis. The twin gods hunted them down and shot them with their bows and arrows; Apollo killed the male children and Artemis the girls.

She can be very vindictive and cruel when she is wronged, and has a bad temper.

Background:

Artemis and her twin brother Apollo were the children of Zeus and Leto, who was the daughter of the Titans Phoebe and Coeus. They were born on the island of Delos because Hera, jealous of her husband's love for the woman, had refused Leto to give birth on either terra firma or on an island out at sea. The only place safe enough to give birth was Delos because Delos was a floating island.

Like Apollo she hunts with a silver bow and silver arrows, made for her by the Cyclopes Brontes, Arges and Steropes. They had been told by Zeus to do whatever she commanded of them, and Artemis had instructed these great smiths to create a splendid silver bow and a quiverful of arrows. In return for this great gift she promised the Cyclopes that they would have to eat the first prey she brought down with her new weapons.

Armed with these weapons Artemis next went to the region of Arcadia and asked Pan for three lop-eared hounds, two parti-colored and one spotted, capable of dragging live lions back to their mistress. Pan also gifted Artemis seven swift hounds from Sparta.

She captured alive four horned hinds and harnessed them to a golden chariot with golden bits. That was her ride. The first four times she tried the silver bow that the Cyclopes had made for her, Artemis sharpened her unerring aim by taking shots at two trees, a wild beast and a city of unjust men, whom she cut down mercilessly.

Her main vocation was to roam mountain forests and uncultivated land with her nymphs in attendance hunting for lions, panthers, hinds and stags. Contradictory to the later, she helped in protecting and seeing to their well-being, also their safety and reproduction. She was armed with a bow and arrows which were made by Hephaestus and the Cyclopes.

Being associated with chastity, Artemis is one of the three virgin goddesses along with Athena and Hestia. Also, all her companions were virgins. Artemis was very protective of her purity, and gave grave punishment to any man who attempted to dishonor her in any form. When Artemis was still only three years old and on her father Zeus' knee, he asked her what presents she would like. She didn't hesitate to ask this of the King of the Olympians:

"Pray give me eternal virginity; as many names as my brother Apollo; a bow and arrows like his; the office of bringing light; a saffron hunting tunic with a red hem reaching to my knees; sixty young ocean nymphs from Amnisus in Crete, to take care of my buskins and feed my hounds when I am not out shooting; all the mountains in the world; and, lastly, any city you care to choose for me, but one will be enough, because I intend to live on mountains most of the time. Unfortunately, women in labor will often be invoking me, since my mother Leto carried and bore me without pains, and the Fates have therefore made me patroness of child-birth."
Callimachus: Hymn to Artemis

Hence, she also presides over childbirth; as stated above, this goes back to the fact that she did not cause her mother any pain when she was born. Artemis demanded the same chastity from her followers and when one of her nymphs, Callisto, was seduced by Zeus and her pregnancy was revealed, she was changed by Artemis into a bear, and would have been hunted to death had Zeus not placed her among the stars. Callisto's son, Arcas, was saved and became the ancestor of the Arcadians.

Artemis was vindictive and there were many who suffered from her anger. One of her actions was to join Apollo in killing the children on Niobe. Artemis took part in the battle against the Giants, where she killed Gration. She also destroyed the Aloadae and is said to have killed the monster Bouphagus.

Actaeon, while out hunting, accidentally came upon Artemis and her nymphs, who bathing naked in a secluded pool. Seeing them in all their naked beauty, the stunned Actaeon stopped and gazed at them, but when Artemis saw him ogling them, she transformed him into a stag. Then, incensed with disgust, she set his own hounds upon him. They chased and killed what they thought was another stag, but it was their master. As with Orion, a giant and a great hunter, there are several legends which tell of his death, one involving Artemis. It is said that he tried to rape the virgin goddess, so she killed him with her bow and arrows.

Artemis was enraged when one of her nymphs, Callisto, allowed Zeus to seduce her, but the great god approached her in one of his guises; he came in the form of Artemis. The young nymph was unwittingly tricked, and she gave birth to Arcas, the ancestor of the Arcadians, but Artemis showed no mercy and changed her into a bear. She then shot and killed her. As Orion, she was sent up to the heavens, and became the constellation of the Great Bear (which is also known as the Plough). 

She was the youngest manifestation of the Triple Moon-goddess, thus Artemis was also associated with the moon, and called Phoebe and Selene (Luna in Latin), neither of which name originally belonged to her. Phoebe was a titan, one of the elder gods. So was Selene, a moon-goddess and sister of Helios, the sun-god often confused with Artemis’ brother, Apollo. She was called The Maiden of the Silver Bow and her silver bow indeed stood for the new moon.

In the later poems Artemis became associated with another goddess, Hecate, the dark and awful goddess of the lower world. Hecate was the Goddess of the Dark of the Moon, the black nights when the moon is hidden. She was associated with deeds of darkness, the Goddess of the Crossways, which were held to be ghostly places of evil magic and awful divinity. Thus she became "the goddess with three forms," Selene in the sky, Artemis on earth and Hecate in the lower world as well as in the world above, when it is wrapped in darkness. In Artemis is shown most vividly the uncertainty between good and evil which exists in every god. Ironically, this contrast is least apparent in her brother, the God of Light, Apollo.

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 Mount Taygetus and in Elis. Her most famous shrine was at Ephesus. Artemis absorbed some cults that involved human sacrifice, such as that practiced in Tauris. She was also the protecting deity of the Amazons who, like her, were warriors and huntresses and independent of men.

Her temple at Ephesus was considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Where Apollo was considered the sun, she was associated with the moon. Ephesus is located on the Aegean coast of Turkey, what the ancients called Asia Minor, about 200 miles south of Ancient Troy. Ephesus controlled the narrow entrance from the Aegean to a large lake and the surrounding beautiful and fertile mountains and hills.

The priests of Artemis were, quite arguably, the world's first bankers. They would issue receipts for the deposit of gold and other precious goods and these receipts would be used as payment, or guarantee of payment, throughout the Greek and Roman worlds - from Britain to Central Asia and Africa.

From pre-historic times, there was also the tradition that every girl would sell her virginity in the Temple of Artemis and give the price to the temple.

Powers: Unlike her brother Apollo, Artemis is not skilled in warcraft but she can punish and kill as the will of Zeus dictates. In The Iliad (24.603), her mother, Leto, was insulted by a woman named Niobe. Niobe boasted that she had twelve children and Leto only had two. As punishment, Apollo killed Niobe’s six sons and Artemis killed her six daughters.

She has the power to heal others, like her brother Apollo, and also to cause disease & pain. She also has the power to help woman who are giving birth, taking away their pain.

She can improve the luck of hunters who follow her ideals, and curse the ones who don't.

She is one of only three who are immune to the enchantments of Aphrodite (the other two are Hestia and Athena).

Favorite City and Followers: Artemis was worshiped in most Greek cities but only as a secondary deity. However, to the Greeks in Asia Minor (modern day Turkey) she was a prominent deity. The cult statues of the Ephesian Artemis differ greatly from those of mainland Greece, whereas she is depicted as a huntress with her bow and arrows. Those found at Ephesus show her in the eastern style, standing erect with numerous nodes on her chest. There have been many theories as to what they represent. Some say they are breasts, others that they are bulls testes which were sacrificed to her. Which is the true interpretation remains uncertain, but each represent fertility.

There were festivals in honor of Artemis, such as the Brauronia, which was held in Brauron; and the festival of Artemis Orthia, held at Sparta, when young Spartan boys would try to steal cheeses from the altar. As they tried they would be whipped, the meaning of Orthia and the nature of the ritual whipping has been lost and there is no logical explanation or translation. Among the epithets given to Artemis are: Potnia Theron (mistress of wild animals) this title was mentioned by the great poet Homer; Kourotrophos (nurse of youth's); Locheia (helper in childbirth); Agrotera (huntress); and Cynthia (taken from her birthplace on Mount Cynthus on Delos). When young girls reached puberty they were initiated into her cult, but when they decided to marry, which Artemis was not against, they were asked to lay in front of the altar all the paraphernalia of their virginity, toys, dolls and locks of their hair, they then left the domain of the virgin goddess.

Favourite Animal: All wild animals are sacred to her, especially the deer. She prefers small cute furry ones and deer though. She loves her hunting hounds, and spends lots of time with them.

Favourite Tree/Flower: The cypress is her tree.

Special IMPORTANT note: Artemis does not have any male priests. Only priestesses. While it is permissible for them to follow her religion, she does not want them in her temples, so that she can feel free to not have to kill anyone who might see her.

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