In classical mythology, the Greek goddess Artemis (Roman Diana) is the virgin protector of fields, hunters, forests, mountains, wild places and animals, and her temples and shrines existed in throughout the Mediterranean Sea and Middle East up until the Christian era. Her temple at Ephesus was one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, and had been constructed on a spot considered scared for thousands of years. In addition to the Greeks and Romans, Artemis was known under various names to the Minoans, Persians, Etruscans and many other ancient peoples, dating back long before recorded history. In the Greek and Roman legends, she was the daughter of Zeus (Jupiter) and twin sister of Apollo, the sun god, while she was always associated with the moon. She is mentioned in Homer and the famous Linear B writings on Crete as part of the Greek pantheon, but her true origins as a Mother Goddess probably date back to the Neolithic and Bronze Ages. Among the ancient Anatolians and Minoans, which were probably matriarchal civilizations, she was a nurturing, creative figure symbolizing fertility whose special rites included the annual running of the bulls, which is still celebrated in the Basque region of Spain. Only later, after the conquest by the early Greeks, did she become a harsher, sterner more masculine and patriarchal figure, who hunted animals rather than protected them and was quick to punish those who neglected their obligations to her.
Over thousands of years, the image and character of Artemis-Diana were continually revised and altered depending on where her cult was located and the requirements of the local rulers. Many of these traditions had developed independently of each other before they were altered by the conquests and colonizing activities of the Greeks and Romans, and therefore Artemis was “constantly being shaped and reworked, depending on the varying contacts with the outside world” (Fischer-Hansen and Poulson 14). She was worshipped in Persia as the goddess Anahita, and by the indigenous peoples of Crete, Anatolia and North Africa, as well as the Etruscans. Her major Roman shrine at Lake Nemi may have existed for two thousand years or longer, which very likely was also the case with her most famous temple at Ephesus. In the earliest traditions, before she even had the name Artemis, she was the Mother Goddess Cybele or the Great Horned Goddess, the symbol of nature, fertility and motherhood. At Ephesus, she was symbolized by a “vast, blackened statue whose body was covered with many egg-like breasts and images of animals” (Husain 126). On Crete, she was sometimes called Britomartis and “her breasts announced her never-ending fertility and her nurturing qualities” (Leeming 138). In the original matriarchal cultures of Crete, Spain and Anatolia, she was celebrated in the rites of spring and by the running of the bulls, and may also have required the human sacrifice of the young male warriors, sons and lovers to maintain the fertility of the earth.
Only in later Greek and Roman mythology did Artemis become a more masculine and patriarchal figure, particularly when associated with the hunt, although her protective and nurturing qualities were not abolished completely and continued to be part of her cult. In some myths she was “born before her brother Apollo, and helped her mother Leto deliver him” (Husain 126). These twins were supposedly favorites of Zues (Jupiter) and her awarded Artemis a magical silver bow, as well as thirty cities, and made her the queen of an army of nymphs. She was required to remain eternally virgin, as were her followers, and when the nymph Kallista was seduced by Zeus, Artemis turned her into a bear as punishment. In her more masculine versions, she could also be exited to great wrath by “the omission of a sacrifice or by the killing of an animal sacred to her” (Fischer-Hansen and Poulson 13). Her transformation into a goddess with a fierce sense of justice who demanded eternal virginity “suggests patriarchal values associated with sexual economics or the ownership of women” that came about after the conquest and subjugation of the more matriarchal cultures that worshipped the mother goddess, which gave Artemis these complex and contradictory traits (Leeming 138). Even so, her original nurturing and maternal character was never eliminated completely even as the Greeks and Romans transformed the nature of her cult in the classical period.
Greeks applied the name and characteristics of their own goddess Artemis to local deities and divinities that they encountered during the expansion of their empires, just as the Romans merged the identity of their native goddess Diana into hers. Therefore, the very appearance of Artemis-Diana took on different forms, depending on the local cultures and traditions. In some, she was the thin, athletic huntress that inflicted harsh punishments and judgments against those mortals who displeased her, while in other myths she was a nurturing, protective and maternal divinity who cared especially for children and animals. Aggressive conquerors and colonizing nations like the Greek and Romans would have preferred a more warlike goddess who was very adept in the use of weapons like the bow, but even among their subject peoples the much earlier traditions of a more caring and material goddess evidently endured for centuries.
WORKS CITED
Fischer-Hansen, Tobias and Britte Poulson (eds). From Artemis to Diana: The Goddess of Man and Beast. Collegium Hyperboreum and Museum Tusculanum Press, 2009.
Husain, Shahrukh. The Goddess: Power, Sexuality, and the Feminine Divine. University of Michigan Press, 1997.
Leeming, David Adams. Goddess: Myths of the Female Divine. Oxford University Press, 1994.
