Artemis, a goddess of Greek Mythology, daughter of Zeus and Leto, twin-sister of Apollo, born with him in Delos, whence she is often called Ortygia from the ancient name of the island, or Cynthia from Mount Cynthus there. To the Greeks she was (1) a kind of feminine Apollo, armed like him with the bow, dealing plagues and death to beasts and men, but also healing diseases and averting evils. She has a special care over the young of animals, and is therefore the goddess of the flocks and the chase. Her heart has never yielded to love. She slew Orion for an attempted insult, and changed Actæon into a stag simply because he had seen her bathing. As the sister of Apollo, regarded as identical with Helios ('the sun'), she came to be regarded as the goddess of the moon, corresponding to Selene, and latterly the worship of the two was amalgamated. (2) The Arcadian Artemis is merely a goddess of the nymphs, hunting together with them on the Arcadian mountains, drawn in a car by four stags with golden antlers. (3) In Attica and Sparta the goddess was worshipped under a somewhat sterner aspect, and the usages point back to original human sacrifices. According to tradition, Iphigenia, who had herself been about to be sacrificed to the goddess, brought her image from Taurus and set it up at Brauron in Attica, whence Brauronia became a name of Artemis. At Sparta boys were scourged at her altar until it was sprinkled with their blood. (4) The goddess worshipped as Artemis at Ephesus was originally a divinity of Asiatic origin, quite distinct from the maiden huntress of native Greek mythology. Instead, she personified the fructifying powers of nature, and her image was represented as many-breasted (polymastos), the attendants of her temple being eunuchs and women. The allusion to her worship as 'Diana of the Ephesians' in Acts xix. will be remembered.
By the Romans Artemis was identified with the ancient Italian divinity Diana, a goddess of light, representing the moon, corresponding to Dianus or Janus, a god of light, the sun. The attributes proper to Artemis were attached to her name.
In art Artemis is represented as a young and handsome huntress, her hair tied up around her head, modestly clothed in the chlamys, but with the legs bare below the knees. She carries the bow and quiver of arrows, and is attended by dogs or stags. As the moon-goddess, again, she is clothed in a long robe, her head covered by a veil, above her brow the crescent of the moon. Her most famous statue is the so-called 'Diana of Versailles,' found in Hadrian's villa near Tivoli, now in the Louvre. See Claus, De Dianæ antiquissima apud Grecos natura (Breslau, 1881); and Schreiber's 'Artemis' in Roscher's Lexikon der Mythologie (Leip. 1884).