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MYTH MAN'S HOMEWORK HELP ARTEMIS ARTEMIS 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. Some versions of the twins' birth state that Artemis was born one day before Apollo, and the birth took place on the island of Ortygia. Then the next day, Artemis helped Leto to cross to the island of Delos, and aided Leto with the delivery of Apollo. Either version may be considered accurate. Like her brother, she has the power to send plagues or sudden death among mortals, and also to heal those who please her. 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 protects little children and all sucking animals. 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. She is one of the three virgin goddesses along with Athena and Hestia. 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." 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. As always in Greek Mythology, she also had her dark side, showing her as fierce and vengeful warrior. For example, although she is the protector of the young, she kept the Greek Fleet from sailing to Troy, until Iphigenia, a royal maiden, daughter of the Commander in Chief Agamemnon was sacrificed to her. All because the Greek soldiers killed one of the creatures, a hare, together with her young. On the other hand, when women died a quick and painless death, they were said to have been slain by Artemis’ silver arrows. 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. Other victims of Artemis included Orion and Actaeon, who had seen her bathing in the nude and was turned by her into a stag, only to be torn to shreds by his own dogs. 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. Ephesus was a rich and important settlement for at least eight thousand years - all of recorded history . . .and before. Small round female forms have been discovered from the Hittite period, which began about 1900 B.C. These were fertility figures of the goddess the Hittites called Ma. The Hittites lived in Asia Minor for a thousand years and disappeared for reasons not now known. They were replaced by Phrygians about 900 B.C. The Phrygians continued to worship the same fertility goddess, renamed Kybele (or Cybele, our modern Sibyl). When the Greeks came here, they merged the deity they had brought from Greece with the goddess of the local people. When the Romans succeeded the Greeks, the worship remained unchanged except in name; the Greek Artemis became the Roman Diana. The Temple of Artemis no longer stands. The wonder of the ancient world was built after the death of Alexander the Great, about 320 B.C., and stood for a thousand years, only to be destroyed by the Goths, a Germanic people, who swept across Europe and across the Bosporus into Asia Minor. The marble from the temple was later used in the construction of local buildings, as well as the important church of St. Sofia in Istanbul. The wonder of the world was the fourth temple to Artemis to be built on the same site. Ivory and gold votive objects have been excavated from beneath the foundations of the first of these temples, indicating the likelihood of even earlier worship and earlier structures. These foundations now lie well below the water table, making further excavation very difficult. The third temple was also very grand, financed in part by the king of Lydia, Croesus. A temple column with a inscription from Croesus (whose wealth was the proverbial "rich as Croesus") is now in the British Museum in London. This third temple was burned down by a madman, Eristratos, on the night of Alexander the Great's birth. Local legend had it that Artemis, being in attendance at Alexander's birth, was unable to defend her temple. 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. The practice exited for perhaps more than a thousand years, until it was outlawed by the Christian Emperor in 682 A.D. Statues of Artemis were discovered just a few years ago. During the construction of an outdoor auditorium, workers found a pit where early Christians had destroyed countless graven images, which had offended them. Although many other statues were completely destroyed, the two statues of Artemis had been spared. The archeologists still wonder why. The only answer they can think of is that the early Christians had recognized and spared the likenesses of the Mother Goddess, whom the early Christians still recognized and respected in her many earlier forms, even though she was clearly seen at that time as Mary. |
