but they are probably of late origin, and formed after the derivation from Xúkos, wolf, had become the prevalent one. Apolló was also named Agyieus (ayvieùs), as the guardian of the streets and roads (ȧyviai). Stone-pillars with pointed heads, placed before the doors of the houses, were the images of the god under this name. This practice was peculiar to the Dórians.1 Apolló was called Pæan, either from his healing power (from Taúш or ПAQ), in which case he would be identical with Pæéón; or from his protecting and avenging character (from Taiw). The hymn sung to him on the cessation of a plague, or after a victory, was thus named. The name Phobos-Apolló is generally regarded as of Grecian origin. The former part critics are unanimous in deriving from páw, to shine; of which the advocates for the original identity of this deity with Hélios see at once the appropriateness: the maintainers of the contrary system interpret Phobos pure, unstained, making it equivalent to the ȧyvòs beòs, as he is sometimes called." Apolló is by some derived from oλw, to destroy; by others from an old verb ảñéλλw, akin to the Latin pello, to drive away; by others again from déλios, the sun, with the digamma F between the first two vowels. The strangest etymon of all is that of Buttmann, who, taking the Krétan form 'Aßéλios to be the original one, deduces it, according to his system of tracing the Greek religion from the East, from Jabal and Jubal, the first musician and first herdsman according to Scripture.3 "Αρτεμις. (Diana.) Artemis was daughter of Zeus and Létó, and sister to Apolló. She was the goddess of the chase; she also presided over health. The sudden deaths of women were ascribed to her darts," as those of men were to the arrows of her brother, of whom she forms the exact counterpart. Artemis was a spotless virgin; her chief joy was to speed like a Dórian maid over the hills, followed by a train of nymphs in pursuit of the flying game." 6 As arrow-joying Artemis along A mountain moves, either Taygetos high, 1 Sch. Aristoph. Wasps, 870. 2 See Müller, Dórians, i. 324. Sch. Eurip. Phœn. 631. Pindar (Ol. vii. 60 (108)) terms Hélios åyvòv eóv, and Eschylos (Prom. 22) speaks of his poíßn pλóg. Mytholog. i. 167 seq. Il. v. 51; xxi. 485. 5 Il. vi. 428; xix. 59. Od. xi. 172; xv. 478. Claud. Rapt. Pros. ii. 27 seq. Od. vi. 102 seq. Od. vi. 102. Comp. Hymn to Aphrodite, 16 seq. and Apoll. Rh. iii. 876 seq. The Homérids have also sung the huntress-goddess: one of them in his hymn to her thus describes her occupations:1 Along the shady hills and breezy peaks, Rejoicing in the chase, her golden bow She bends, her deadly arrows sending forth. Then tremble of the lofty hills the tops; The shady wood rebelloweth aloud 3 Unto the bowstring's twang; the earth itself Slaughtering the race of salvage beasts. But when Would cheer her soul, relaxing her curved bow Of Delphi, there to arrange the lovely dance Her springy bow and arrows, and begins In raiment fair. They, pouring forth their voice She brought forth children, 'mid the Deathless far Kallimachos thus relates the early history of the goddess.2 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 Kyklópes, and to devote herself to the chase. She further asked for sixty Oceannymphs as her companions, and twenty nymphs from Amnísos in Kréte 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 childbirth. Her indulgent sire assented with a smile, and gave her not one but thirty towns. She speeds to Kréte, and thence to Ocean, and selects all her nymphs. On her return she calls at Lipara on Héphæstos and the Kyklópes, who immediately lay aside all their work to execute her orders. She now proceeds to Arkadia, where 1 Hymn xxvii. 2 Hymn to Artemis. 3 The purity and chastity generally ascribed to Artemis may, as some think, have their origin in the pure unsullied light of the moon in southern regions; but may as well have had a moral origin in the character of those maidens who devoted themselves to rural pursuits. Pan, the chief god of that country, supplies her with dogs of an excellent breed. Mount Parrhasios then witnessed the first exploit of 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 Héra for the last labour of Héraklés, bounded across the Keladón 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. Hermés takes her bow and arrows, and Apolló used to carry in her game, till Héraklés 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 Héraklés, the poet observes, though deified, still retains his appetite. The Amnisiades then unyoke her stags, and bring to them from Héra'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 Apolló. 3 The adventures of Artemis were not numerous. She turned, as we shall relate below, Aktæón into a stag, for having unconsciously beheld her when bathing.1 Kallistó was changed by her into a bear, for breach of chastity. O'ríón perished by her arrows; as also did Chioné the daughter of Dædalión, who set her beauty above that of the goddess. With her brother she destroyed the children of Niobé, who had presumed to prefer herself to Létó;5 and in a fable later than Homer she is said to have detained the Grecian fleet at Aulis, in consequence of Agamemnón's having killed a hind which was sacred to her, and to have required the sacrifice of his daughter Iphigeneia. The Alóeids, O'tos and Ephialtés, it was said, sought in marriage Héra 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 died." 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 2 Part II. chap. viii. Kallistó. 5 Il. xxiv. 602. 1 See Part II. chap. iv. Autonoé. Od. v. 123. 6 Apollod. i. 7, 4. 4 Ov. Met. xi. 321. Kallim. Hymn iii. 264: see Part II. chap. iv. O'tos. epithets. Of these practices Artemis furnishes more examples perhaps than any other deity. The Krétans worshipped 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 Diktynna, a goddess of that name, and of a similar nature, having been perhaps united with her. There was a similar deity named Aphæa, worshipped at Ægína, and they were all joined in a legend in the following manner. The Krétan nymph Britomartis, the daughter of Zeus and Charmé, was a favourite companion of Artemis. Minós 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 (díkrva) of some fishermen. The Krétans afterwards worshipped her as a goddess under the name of Diktynna, from the above circumstance, which also was assigned as the reason of the cliff from which she threw herself being called Diktaon. 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 Kréte, Britomartis then sailed for Ægína 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 (ápavýs): hence she was worshipped in Ægína under the name of Aphæa.2 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, 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 1 Βριτόν, ἀγαθόν, Et. Mag. v. Βριτόμαρτις. 2 Kallim. Hymn iii. 189. Diodór. v. 76. Anton. lib. 40. Strab. x. 4, 12, p. 479. Paus. ii. 30, 3. Diktynna (like díkтvov) apparently comes from dixw, to cast, and alludes to the moonbeams; Aphæa evidently comes from páw, to shine. rose in the isle of Ortygia at Syracuse, still followed by the amorous stream.1 6 The explanation of this mythe is as follows. Artemis was worshipped in E'lis under the titles of Alpheima, Alpheióa, Alpheiónia, and Alpheiusa; and there was a common altar to her and Alpheios within the precincts of the Altis at Olympia. 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 (Toтaμía), 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 sea. From the original connection 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 sea. Eventually, when the poetic notion of Artemis as a love-shunning maiden became the prevalent one, the goddess was made to fly the pursuit of Alpheios.10 The legend at Letríni was " that he fell in love with her, but seeing no chance of success in a lawful way he resolved to force her. For this purpose he came to Letríni, 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 Arethusa.12 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 1 Ov. Met. v. 572 seq. Moschos, Idyl. vii. 2 See Müller, Proleg. 135. Dorians, i. 393. 8 3 Paus. vi. 22, 8-10. Strab. viii. 3, 12, p. 343. Athen. viii. 346. 6 Id. Pyth. ii. 4 (7), cum Sch. 7 Id. Pyth. ii. 7 (11). Ibycos ap. vi. 2, 4, p. 270. Cic. Verr. iv. 53. Sch. Pind. Nem. i. 1. Diodór. v. 3. Strab. 8 Ibycos ap. Sch. Theocr. i. 117. Pind. Nem. i. 1. Thus when Artemis had become the huntress, the Eleians changed the name of the Alpheima of the Letrinæans to Elaphiæa (from ěλapos), Paus. ut sup. 10 Pind. ut sup. 11 Paus. ut sup. 12 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, as it speaks of the fount of Arethusa. Welcker (Schwenk. 263) regards this name as being api-bowσa. We shall presently offer what we deem a more likely etymon. |