κολεὀς (“sword-sheath”); and λαφρία (see above) may refer to the spoils of war as well as the chase.
The idea of Artemis as a virgin goddess, the “queen and huntress, chaste and fair,” which obtained great prominence in early times, and seems inconsistent with her association with childbirth, is generally explained as due to her connexion with Apollo, but it is suggested by Farnell that παρθένος originally meant “unmarried,” and that “Ἄρτεμις παρθένος may have been originally the goddess of a people who had not yet the advanced Hellenic institutions of settled marriage ... and when society developed the later family system the goddess remained celibate, though not opposed to childbirth.”
Another view of the original character of Artemis, which has found much support in modern times, is that she was a moon-goddess. But there is no trace of Artemis as such 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 φωσφόρος, σελασφόρος, αἰθοπία, although applicable, are by no means convincing. The idea dates from the 5th century, and was due to her connexion with Hecate and Apollo. 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 (see Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie, ii. p. 1297, note 2).
It has been mentioned that Callisto, Iphigeneia, Eilithyia, are only Artemis under different names; to these may be added Adrasteia, Atalanta, Helen, Leto and others (see Wernicke in Pauly-Wissowa’s Realencyclopädie).
Again, various non-Hellenic divinities were identified with Artemis, and their cult gradually amalgamated with hers. The most important of these was Artemis of Ephesus, whose seat was in the marshy valley of the Caystrus. Like the Greek Artemis, she was essentially a nature goddess, the great foster-mother of the vegetable and animal kingdom. A number of officials were engaged in the performance of her temple service. Her eunuch priests, μεγάβυζοι (a name which points to a Persian origin), were under the control of a high priest called Essen (according to others, there was a body of priests called Essenes). There were also three classes of priestesses, Mellierae, Hierae, Parierae; there is no evidence that they were called Melissae (“bees”), although the bee is a frequent symbol on the coins of the city. 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 downwards and sculptured all round with rows of animals (lions, rams and bulls).
Mention may also be made of the following non-Hellenic representatives of Artemis. Leucophryne (or Leucophrys), whose worship was brought by emigrants from Magnesia in Thessaly to Magnesia on the Maeander, was a nature goddess, and her representation on coins exactly resembles that of the Ephesian Artemis. Her cult, however, from the little that is known of it appears to have been more Hellenic. There was an altar and temple of Artemis Pergaea at Perga in Pamphylia, where a yearly festival was held in her honour. As in the case of Cybele, mendicant priests were attached to her service. Similar figures were Artemis Coloēnē, worshipped at Lake Coloē near Sardis; Artemis Cordax, celebrated in wanton dances on Mount Sipylus; the Persian Artemis, identical with Anaitis Bendis, was a Thracian goddess of war and the chase, whose cult was introduced into Attica in the middle of the 5th century B.C. by Thracian metics. At her festival called Bendidea, held at the Peiraeus, there was a procession of Thracians who were settled in the district, and a torch-race on horseback. (For Britomartis see separate article.)
Among the chief attributes of Artemis are: the hind, specially regarded as her sacred animal; the bear, the boar and the goat; the zebu (Artemis Leucophrys); 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 drawing an arrow from the quiver on her shoulder with the right. 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 (ξόανα), 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. On the coins of Arcadia, Aetolia, Crete and Sicily, are to be seen varied and beautiful representations of her head as conceived by the Greek artists in the best times.
Authorities.—Articles in Pauly-Wissowa’s Realencyclopädie; Roscher’s Lexikon der Mythologie, and Daremberg and Saglio’s Dictionnaire des antiquités (s.v. Diana, with well-arranged bibliography); L. Preller, Griechische Mythologie (4th ed. by C. Robert); L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, ii. (1896); O. Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie und Religions-Geschichte, ii. (1906); A. Claus, De Dianae antiquissima apud Graecos natura (Breslau, 1880). In the article Greek Art, fig. 11 (a gold ornament from Camirus) represents the Oriental goddess identified by the Greeks with Artemis.
For the Roman goddess identified with Artemis see Diana. (J. H. F.)
ARTEMISIA, daughter of Lygdamis, was queen of Halicarnassus and Cos about 480 B.C. Being a dependent of Persia, she took part in person in the expedition of Xerxes against the Greeks, and fitted out five ships, with which she distinguished herself in the sea-fight near Salamis (480). When closely pursued by the Athenians she escaped by the stratagem of attacking one of the Persian vessels, whereupon the Athenians concluded that she was an ally, and gave up the pursuit (Herod. vii. 99, viii. 68). After the battle Xerxes declared that the men had fought like women, and the women like men. By her advice he did not risk another battle, but at once retired from Greece. She is said to have loved a young man named Dardanus, of Abydos, and, enraged at his neglect of her, to have put out his eyes while he was asleep. The gods, as a punishment for this, ordered her, by an oracle, to take the famous but rather mythical lover’s leap from the Leucadian promontory (Photius, Cod. 153a).
ARTEMISIA, the sister and wife of Mausolus (or Maussollus), king of Caria, was sole ruler from about 353 to 350 B.C. She has immortalized herself by the honours paid to the memory of her husband. She built for him, in Halicarnassus, a very magnificent tomb, called the Mausoleum, which was one of the seven wonders of the world, and from which the name mausoleum was afterwards given to all tombs remarkable for their grandeur. She appointed panegyrics to be composed in his honour, and offered valuable prizes for the best oratorical and tragic compositions. She also
