The Homerids have also sung the huntress-goddess: one of them in his hymn to her thus describes her occupationsa: Along the shady hills and breezy peaks, Unto the bowstring's twang; the earth itself Would cheer her soul, relaxing her curved bow Of Delphi, there to arrange the lovely dance In raiment fair. They, pouring forth their voice She brought forth children, 'mid the Deathless far Callimachus thus relates the early history of the goddess". Artemis while yet a child, as she sat on her father's knee, besought him to grant her permission to lead a life of perpetual virginity, to get a bow and arrows formed by the Cyclopes, and to devote herself to the chase. She further asked for sixty Ocean-nymphs as her companions, and twenty nymphs from Amnisos in Crete as her attendants. Of towns and cities she required not more than one, satisfied with the mountains, which she never would leave but to aid women in the pains of child-birth. Her indulgent sire assented with a smile, and gave her not one but thirty towns. She speeds to Crete, and thence to Ocean, and selects all her nymphs. On her return she calls at Lipara on Hephæstos and the Cyclopes, who immediately lay aside all their work to execute her orders. She now proceeds to Arcadia, where Pan, the chief god of that country, supplies her with dogs of an excellent breed. Mount Parrhasios then witnessed the first exploit of a Hymn xxvii. b Hymn to Artemis. K 6 the huntress-goddess. Five deer larger than bulls, with horns of gold, fed on the banks of the dark-pebbled' Anauros at the foot of that hill: of these the goddess unaided by her dogs caught four, which she reserved to draw her chariot : the fifth, destined by Hera for the last labour of Heracles, bounded across the Keladôn and escaped. According to the same poet, the chariot of Artemis and the harness of her deer are all of gold. When she drives to the house of Zeus, the gods come forth to meet her. Hermes takes her bow and arrows, and Apollo used to carry in her game, till Heracles was received into Olympos, when for his strength that office devolved on him. He carries in the bull, or boar, or whatever else she may have brought, exhorting the goddess to let the hares and small game alone, and attach herself to the boars and oxen; for Heracles, the poet observes, though deified, still retains his appetite. The Amnisiades then unyoke her stags, and bring to them from Hera's mead some of the trefoil on which the horses of Zeus feed, and fill their golden troughs with water. The goddess herself meantime enters the house of her father, and sits beside her brother Apollo. The adventures of Artemis were not numerous. She turned, as we shall relate below, Actæôn into a stag, for having unconsciously beheld her when bathinga. Callisto was changed by her into a bear, for breach of chastity". Oriôn perished by her arrows. With her brother she destroyed the children of Niobe, who had presumed to prefer herself to Letod; and in a fable later than Homer she is said to have detained the Grecian fleet at Aulis, in consequence of Agamemnôn's having killed a hind which was sacred to her, and to have required the sacrifice of his daughter Iphigeneia. The Aloeids, Otos and Ephialtes, it was said, sought in marriage Hera and Artemis: the latter goddess, changing her form into that of a hind, sprang out between the two brothers, who aiming their darts at the supposed beast, by her art pierced each other and diede. See Part II. chap. iv. Autonoe. c Od. v. 121. e b Part II. chap. viii. Callisto. a Il. xxiv. 602. Apollod. i. 7. Callim. Hymn iii. 264. Below, Part II. chap. iv. We have already noticed the practice of the Greeks to unite similar deities, or to make one of them principal, and the others companions or attendants; and also to form nymphs and other subordinate beings attached to the service of the gods out of their epithets. Of these practices Artemis furnishes more examples perhaps than any other deity. The Cretans worshiped a goddess the same as or very similar to Artemis, whom they named Britomartis, which in their dialect signified Sweet Maid. She was also called Dictynna, a goddess of that name, and of a similar nature, having been perhaps united with her. There was a similar deity named Aphæa worshiped at Ægina, and they were all joined in a legend in the following manner. The Cretan nymph Britomartis, the daughter of Zeus and Charme, was a favourite companion of Artemis. Minôs falling in love with her, pursued her for the space of nine months, the nymph at times concealing herself from him amidst the trees, at times among the reeds and sedge of the marshes. At length, being nearly overtaken by him, she sprang from a cliff into the sea, where she was saved in the nets (Sixтva) of some fishermen. The Cretans afterwards worshiped her as a goddess under the name of Dictynna from the above circumstance, which also was assigned as the reason of the cliff from which she threw herself being called Dictaon. At the rites sacred to her, wreaths of pine or lentisk were used instead of myrtle, as a branch of the latter had caught her garments and impeded her flight. Leaving Crete, Britomartis then sailed for Ægina in a boat: the boatman attempted to offer her violence, but she got to shore and took refuge in a grove on that island, where she became invisible (åpavỳs): hence she was worshiped in Ægina under the name of Aphæaa. The well-known legend of Alpheios and Arethusa offers another remarkable instance of this procedure. Arethusa, it is said, was an Arcadian nymph, and a companion of the huntress-goddess. As she was one day returning from the chase she came to the clear stream of the Alpheios, and enticed by its beauty stripped herself and entered it, Callim. Hymn iii. 189. Diodor. v. 76. Anton. Lib. 40. Strabo, x. 4. Paus. ii. 30, 3. Müller, Æginet. 164. seq. to drive away the heat and the fatigue. She heard a murmur in the stream, and terrified sprang to land. The river-god rose: she fled away naked as she was; Alpheios pursued her. She sped all through Arcadia, till with the approach of evening she felt her strength to fail, and saw that her pursuer was close upon her. She then prayed to Artemis for relief, and was immediately dissolved into a fountain. Alpheios resumed his aqueous form, and sought to mingle his waters with hers. She fled on under the earth and through the sea, till she rose in the isle of Ortygia at Syracuse, still followed by the amorous streama. The explanation of this mythe is as follows. Artemis was worshiped in Elis under the titles of Alpheiæa, Alpheioa, Alpheionia, and Alpheiusa; and there was a common altar to her and Alpheios within the precincts of the Altis at Olympiad. When in the fifth Olympiad Archias the Corinthian founded the colony of Syracuse in Sicily, there were among the colonists some members of the sacerdotal family of the Iamids of Olympia. These naturally exercised much influence in the religious affairs of the colony, whose first seat was the islet of Ortygia. A temple was built there to Artemis Of-the-Stream (Пoτauía), to which perhaps the proximate inducement was the presence of the fount Arethusa, which contained large fishes, and sent forth a copious stream of water into the seaf. From the original connexion between Alpheios and Artemis, the notion gradually arose, or it was given out, that the fount contained water of the Alpheios, and thence came the legend of his course under the seas. Eventually, when the poetic notion of Artemis as a love-shunning maiden became the prevalent oneh, the goddess was made to fly the pursuit of Alpheios. The legend at Letrini wask that he fell in love with he re her, but seeing no chance of success in a lawful way solved to force her. For this purpose he came to Letrini, where she and her nymphs were celebrating a pannychis or wake, and mingled with them. But the goddess, suspecting his design, had daubed her own face and those of her nymphs with mud, so that he was unable to distinguish her, and thus was foiled. Finally she was converted into the coy nymph Arethusaa. A late pragmatising form of the pleasing mythe was, that Alpheios was a hunter who was in love with the huntress Arethusa. To escape from his importunities she passed over to Ortygia, where she was changed into a fountain, and Alpheios became a riverb. In proof of the truth of this fable, it was asserted that a cup (pián) which fell into the Alpheios rose in Arethusa, whose pellucid waters also became turbid with the blood of the victims slain at the Olympic games. We may here observe, that in the Peloponnese the relation between Artemis and the water was very intimate. She was worshiped in several places as Limnatis and Heleia, and there were frequently fountains in her temples. She was therefore probably regarded as a goddess of nature, that gave vigour and growth to plants and animals by the means of waterd Among the various titles of Artemis were Loxo, Hecaerge, Arge, and Opis, or Upis. She bore the two first as the sister of Apollo Loxias and Hecaergos. She was styled Arge as the swift or the bright goddess, and Upis or Opis as her whose eye was over all. In the isle of Delos however were shown the tombs of Opis and Arge behind the temple of Artemis, and the tradition of the place was, that they, who were two Hyperborean maidens, had been the companions of Apollo and Artemis when they first came to Delose. According to another account, these Hyperborean maidens were three in * It is uncertain when this change took place; it is the goddess who is pursued in Telesilla, ut sup. (Ol. 64.). The oracle given to Archias (Paus. v. 7, 3.) is probably a late fiction; it speaks of the fount of Arethusa. Welcker (Schwenk. 263.) regards this name as being ape-bowσa. It may be only a corruption of Alpheiusa. b Paus. v. 7, 2. Ibycus ut sup. Strabo ut sup. Mela, ii. 7. Plin. Hist. Nat. ii. 103. 4 Müller, Dorians, i. 392. e Herod. iv. 35. |