molished the Temple of Artemis, and out of vengeance the goddess gave to pilgrims on the road to Myra some oil that was to burn the church of the saint. But the saint appeared to them when they were at sea, and commanded them to throw the oil overboard. They obeyed, and the oil burned on the surface of the water with an infernal flame.[1] In a Syriac text of the British Museum this Artemis is called Mater Deorum.[2] She evidently is not the Greek, but the Ephesian, Artemis; not a virgin like the former, but a symbol of motherhood, as is plainly shown by her being represented with many breasts.[3] "The goddess of Ephesos is the goddess of fecundity, as her attributes indicate."[4] She is thus related to the goddesses of Asia Minor, Cybele and Anaitis, who are also akin to the Greek Aphrodite. In the town of Perga, in Pamphilia, a coin was stamped with the representation of the Pergasian Artemis, very like the goddesses of Love and of Fecundity of Asia Minor.[5]
The cult of the Ephesian Artemis is at once Eastern and Greek; as lunar deities, Anaitis and Cybele were confounded with the Moon-goddess Artemis, who in her turn received from them qualities foreign to her original nature.[6] Hence the difference between the Ephesian goddess and her Greek namesake. In Armenia there was a goddess called Artemis-Anaitis, and her cult had a purely bacchic character.[7] From Cybele and Anaitis there is but one step
- ↑ Migne, Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Graeca, t. I16; Simeonis Metaphrastæ opera, p. 354; Legenda Aurea Iacobis da Voragine. Lipsiae, 1846, p. 24.
- ↑ Addit. Cat. of Syriac MSS., No. 14,645, printed in vol, viii of the Memoirs of the Oriental Section of the Imperial Archæological Society of St. Petersburg.
- ↑ O. Seyffert, A Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. London, 1891, pp. 72.
- ↑ Maury, Histoire des religions de la Grèce, etc., t. iii, p. 155.
- ↑ Texier, L'Asie Mineure, p 599.
- ↑ Guhl, Ephesiaca, Berlin, 843, P. 119; and Maury, l. c.
- ↑ Guhl, p. 168.
