47 Fun Facts About Artemis

Artemis was the Greek goddess of the hunt and of which celestial body in later tradition?

The Moon came to Artemis late: the Greeks' own lunar goddess was Selene, and once her twin was equated with the sun god Helios, it seemed natural to pair her with Helios's sister.

Who was Artemis's twin brother?

Apollo was Artemis's twin; by some accounts she was born first and, as a newborn, helped her mother deliver him.

Who was the mother of Artemis?

Leto, daughter of the Titans Coeus and Phoebe, had fierce defenders: in most tellings her children shot down the giant Tityos when he tried to carry her off near Delphi, and vultures feed on him in Hades.

On which island, in most accounts, was Artemis born?

Delos, then a floating island, took in the persecuted mother when no fixed land dared, and the story goes that it has stood anchored to the sea floor ever since.

Along with Athena and which other goddess, Artemis was one of the three great virgin goddesses?

Hestia, goddess of the hearth, was courted by two gods, refused both and swore on Zeus's head to stay a maiden; the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite counts her with Athena and Artemis as the three love cannot sway.

In Callimachus's hymn, who forged Artemis's bow and arrows?

The Cyclopes made them at their forge on Lipari; she had met them before, when at three she sat on the knee of the Cyclops Brontes and tore a fistful of hair from his chest.

The hunter Actaeon saw Artemis bathing and was turned into which animal before his own dogs killed him?

A stag: the bath is the telling that became standard, while older ones blame a hunting boast or his courting of Semele. In Apollodorus his grieving hounds were consoled by a lifelike statue of him made by the centaur Chiron.

Actaeon was a grandson of Cadmus, the legendary founder of which Greek city?

Thebes was founded by Cadmus, whose house ran to torn sons: Actaeon fell to his hounds, and his cousin Pentheus was pulled apart by his own mother and aunts in a Bacchic frenzy.

Artemis's companion Callisto was transformed into which animal after Zeus seduced her?

A she-bear is what Callisto became, at the hands of Artemis, Zeus or his jealous wife depending on the teller; in Ovid her own son Arcas, grown into a hunter, came within a spear's throw of killing her.

In most tellings, Callisto's father was which Arcadian king, who was turned into a wolf?

Lycaon became a wolf, in the best-known version, for serving Zeus human flesh to test whether his guest was truly a god; the comic poet Amphis added that Zeus won Callisto disguised as Artemis.

Which boastful queen mocked Artemis's mother for having only two children and lost all her own to the twins?

Niobe lost six sons and six daughters in the Iliad; turned to stone on Mount Sipylus, she weeps still, and a crag there that seems to shed tears has been shown as hers since antiquity.

Which of Artemis's hunting companions was killed by a giant scorpion and placed among the stars?

Orion had boasted he would kill every beast on earth; in the usual telling Gaia sent the scorpion to stop him, and the two were set in the sky so that one rises as the other sets.

In one telling, why did Artemis's brother trick her into shooting her companion?

He won her love: Istrus, quoted by Hyginus, says she came near marrying the hunter, so her disapproving brother dared her to hit a distant speck far out at sea, which was the swimmer's head.

Which Greek commander shot a deer sacred to Artemis, so that she held his fleet at Aulis?

Agamemnon shot a creature sacred to Artemis and boasted of the kill; she kept the fleet from sailing and demanded his daughter Iphigenia as the price of a fair wind.

Which playwright's Iphigenia in Tauris shows the girl serving as Artemis's priestess after her rescue?

Euripides has the rescued girl preside over the Taurians' sacrifice of strangers; her own brother Orestes is captured and handed to her for the altar before she recognises him, and they escape with the goddess's statue.

Iphigenia was brought to Aulis under the pretence that she would marry which hero?

Achilles knew nothing of the wedding in the classic stage version; furious that his name had been used as bait, he vowed to defend the girl against the whole army.

In Homer's Iliad, which side did Artemis take in the war?

The Trojans had Artemis on their side, as they had her twin; in the battle of the gods Zeus's wife pulled the bow from her shoulders, beat her about the ears with it and sent her off in tears.

At which city's sanctuary of Artemis Orthia were boys ritually flogged at her altar?

Sparta's priestess stood by with the goddess's small wooden image, Pausanias says, and if the floggers spared a boy for his looks or rank it grew too heavy for her to hold.

Artemis sent the great boar that ravaged Calydon because King Oeneus had forgotten her at what?

The harvest sacrifices went to every god but her, the Iliad says; and once heroes had killed the boar she set two peoples warring over who should keep its head and hide.

Homer's title for Artemis, 'Potnia Theron', means what?

Mistress of animals cut both ways: the huntress who killed game was also its protector, above all of the young, and the Iliad gives her the title just once.

Some scholars have linked the name Artemis to the Greek word arktos, meaning what?

Bear: arktos is Greek for bear, and the link would suit her rites in Attica, where girls played the animal; but etymologists now doubt it and call her name's origin unknown.

At which Attic sanctuary did Athenian girls serve Artemis in the Arkteia rite before marriage?

Brauron is also where one Athenian tragedy sends Iphigenia to end her days as the goddess's key-keeper, with the robes of women who died in childbirth laid at her tomb.

Which Cretan goddess of mountains and hunting was later identified with Artemis?

Britomartis fled King Minos for nine months, then leapt off a cliff into the sea and landed in fishermen's nets, in Callimachus's telling; he says that is why Cretans called her Diktynna, lady of the nets.

Which god gave Artemis her hunting dogs, animals said to be able to hunt even lions?

Pan was butchering a lynx to feed his own pack when she reached his Arcadian fold, Callimachus says; he handed over six hounds and then seven bitches swifter than the wind.

Which of Heracles' labours meant taking a beast sacred to Artemis alive, after a chase lasting a whole year?

The Ceryneian Hind had golden horns, and in Apollodorus Heracles chased it for a whole year, hoping not to wound it; when Artemis stopped him on the road he blamed Eurystheus, and she let him carry it off alive.

Which band of women did Callimachus credit with founding Artemis's cult at Ephesus, dancing round her image under an oak?

The Amazons set up her image beneath an oak by the shore, Callimachus says, and danced a war dance round it in shields and armour; a great shrine later rose on the spot.

Which son of Theseus, a chaste devotee of Artemis, was destroyed by Aphrodite's scheming?

Hippolytus, son of Theseus, worshipped Artemis and scorned Aphrodite, who made his stepmother Phaedra desire him; his father's curse had him dragged to death by his own horses.

In Pindar's telling, Artemis shot which pregnant Thessalian princess, her brother's lover, for sleeping with a mortal?

Coronis lay with the mortal Ischys while carrying the god's child; Artemis shot her, and the unborn boy cut from her pyre grew up to be Asclepius, god of medicine.

Artemis's mother turned some Lycian peasants into which animals after they muddied a pool she wanted to drink from?

Frogs, because she cursed them to live in that pool for ever: in Ovid they had jumped in and churned up the mud out of spite when she knelt, parched, to drink.

The Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders, stood at Ephesus in what is now which country?

Turkey holds the ruins, near the town of Selçuk; river silt has pushed the coast so far west that the great Greek port now lies well inland.

Which king funded the rebuilding of the Temple of Artemis from around 550 BC?

Croesus had just conquered Ephesus himself; the king whose name became a byword for wealth then paid for most of the new temple's marble columns, Herodotus says.

Who is popularly blamed for burning down the Temple of Artemis in 356 BC, seeking fame at any cost?

Herostratus wanted his name to live for ever, so a decree forbade anyone ever to speak it; writers such as Strabo set it down anyway, and he got his wish.

Ancient tradition held that Artemis's temple at Ephesus burned down on the night of whose birth?

Alexander the Great was born in 356 BC, and Plutarch relates Hegesias's joke that Artemis was away attending his delivery when her temple burned.

What excuse did Ephesus give a conqueror offering to rebuild Artemis's burnt temple?

Gods shouldn't build for gods was flattery, Strabo reports: the young king wanted his name on the inscription in return, so the city declined and paid with its own savings and its women's jewellery.

Which invaders set fire to the Temple of Artemis in the 260s AD?

The Goths 'set fire to the renowned temple of Diana', their historian Jordanes wrote; accounts disagree on the exact year, and blocks from the ruin ended up in other buildings around Ephesus.

In Acts, Ephesian metalsmiths rioted against whose preaching, shouting 'Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!'?

Paul's preaching in the city, in Acts 19, provoked the silversmith Demetrius, whose trade in silver shrines of Artemis was threatened, into stirring a riot in the theatre.

The rex Nemorensis, Diana's priest at Lake Nemi, held office until what happened?

A challenger killed him in a duel, and only a runaway slave could try: Strabo says the priest went about armed with a sword, always looking round for the next attack.

On which Roman hill did Diana have her temple, traditionally dedicated by King Servius Tullius?

The Aventine temple was built jointly with the Latin cities at Servius's urging, Livy says, in imitation of the shrine that the cities of Asia had raised together at Ephesus.

Artemis's Roman counterpart bore the epithet 'Trivia', referring to her guardianship over what?

Three-way crossroads, trivium in Latin, were her haunt; the same root gave English 'trivial', because what belongs to the crossroads is public and so commonplace.

The Diana of Versailles, a Roman marble of the goddess with a deer, is displayed in which museum?

The Louvre got it back in 1798; a pope gave the statue to Henry II of France in 1556, and Louis XIV later moved it to the great gallery at Versailles, which is how it got its name.

Which rocket lifted the uncrewed Artemis I mission off the pad in November 2022?

Space Launch System was NASA's brand-new heavy lifter on its first flight, yet its four main engines were veterans: all of them had already flown on Space Shuttle missions.

Which goddess was delayed nine days before she came to deliver Artemis's twin?

Eileithyia, goddess of childbirth, was kept from the labour for nine days until Iris lured her down with a golden necklace, in the Homeric Hymn to the twin god.

Carved column drums from Artemis's temple at Ephesus are now in which museum?

The British Museum sponsored John Turtle Wood's long search, and when he finally struck the buried temple in 1869 its carved column fragments went home to London.

Which abandoned infant, later a famous huntress dear to Artemis, was suckled in the wild by a bear?

Atalanta was exposed at birth by a father who wanted a son; hunters found and raised her, and she grew up to draw first blood in the Calydonian boar hunt.

Which girl's name began as a byname of Artemis, from the mountain of her birth?

Cynthia means 'woman from Cynthus', the hill on her birth island; nobody gave it to a real girl until the Renaissance, and Cindy is its short form.

Artemis shot Chione, who boasted of outshining her in beauty, through which part of the body?

The tongue took the arrow, Ovid says, and the boast died with her; her grieving father Daedalion ran up Parnassus to jump off and was turned into a hawk in mid-leap.

What disguise let Artemis hide among her nymphs from the river god Alpheus?

Mud on every face did it, Pausanias says: at an all-night revel she daubed herself and her nymphs alike, and the god, unable to pick her out, went away without her.