Artemis, the faithful sister of Apollo

Artemis, Greek Goddess of Hunting

An important goddess of the greek pantheon, Artemis was the proud goddess of nature and hunting. She was thus perceived as a young virgin who rules and protects wildlife, but also protects women with childbirth.

The goddess is decribed by Homer to be the daughter of Zeus and Leto. She is also god Apollo's twin sister.

Despite this was her prevalent identity throughout ancient literature in Greek Mythology, the fact that the goddess appears in so many other forms and is represented in so many other symbols, suggests that that the goddess did not originate in Greece, but her identity was rather imported from other ancient cultures.

The goddess's birth

**Artemis archaic image**

As mentioned above, the prevalent myth about Artemis's birth is contained in Homeric hymns, according to which Leto, Zeus's lover, gives birth to the virgin goddess on the island of Ogygia, while being chased by her rival, Hera.

The following day, the goddess of hunting helps her mother give birth to her sibling, Apollo,on the island of Delos.

In other versions, the goddess appears to be the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, or Zeus and Persephone, Demeter's daughter.

Her relationship with her brother, Apollo

**Artemis on a relief**

The goddess is closely linked with both the cult and the adventures of her beloved brother, Apollo.

She kills the nymph Coronis, who rejected Apollo, and does not even abandon her brother during his purification for the murder of Python.

In the battle of Zeus against the Giants, the goddess changed into a deer and used her arrows to shoot dead Gaios or Raios.

According to another account, when the giants Otus and Ephialtes, tried to climb Mount Olympus to seduce both her and Hera, the goddess of hunting tossed a deer between them; the two giants killed each other when they both tried to kill the animal.

The goddess's relationship with mortals

**Artemis watching the death of Aktaion**

The goddess's relationships with mortals, as cited by ancient storytellers, were generally not very agreeable. In most of the cases, she appears to be revengeful and mean, causing the death, either directly or indirectly, of the people she dealt with.

Here are some examples of her encounters:

According to a myth, she killed Ariadne, on the request of god Dionysus. Ariadne was the daughter of Minos, the king of Crete, who abandoned her father, joining Theseus on his way back to Athens, after killing the Minotaur.

The goddess was also indirectly responsible for the death of Ariadne's sister Phaedra, Theseus's second wife, who killed herself over Hippolytus. As the story goes, Phaedra was infatuated with her husband's stepson, who, however, rejected her advances because he was dedicated to Artemis.