Ἄρτεμις
Artemis阿耳忒弥斯
Roman name Diana
Goddess of the hunt · Moon and wilderness
The huntWildernessThe moonYoung girls
Meet Artemis in the 3D temple ›Origins
Daughter of Leto, born before Apollo — and no sooner born than she helped deliver him. At three she sat on Zeus's knee and asked never to marry, and for a silver bow, a band of nymphs, and every mountain in the world.
Sacred symbols
Silver bowDeerCrescent moonHounds
Myths
Actaeon
The hunter Actaeon stumbled on her bathing in the woods. She splashed him with water and turned him into a stag, and his own fifty hounds tore him apart.
Orion
The giant hunter Orion was the only man she kept as a companion. Accounts of his death differ: stung by a monstrous scorpion sent by the Earth, or shot by Artemis herself through a trick of Apollo's. He became a constellation, with Scorpius forever at his heels.
The sacrifice at Aulis
Agamemnon killed her sacred deer and boasted about it. She stilled the winds so the Greek fleet could not leave Aulis and demanded his daughter Iphigenia — though at the last moment, it is said, she put a deer in the girl's place.
Did you know
NASA's return to the Moon is called Artemis — because the first programme took her brother's name.
Relationships with the other gods
KinZeus
Wishes made on his knee
Three-year-old Artemis climbed onto her father's knee, reached for his beard and reeled off her wishes: to stay a maiden forever, more titles than her brother, a bow, a company of nymphs and all the mountains. Zeus laughed, granted every one, and threw in thirty cities.
FeudHera
A slap on the battlefield
When the gods came to blows beneath Troy, Artemis taunted her. Hera caught both her wrists in one hand, took her bow with the other and boxed her ears with it. Arrows scattered everywhere, and the huntress ran weeping to her father's knee.
KinApollo
The twins of Delos
One rules the sun and one the moon, and neither ever misses with a bow. They were fierce on their mother's behalf: when Queen Niobe of Thebes boasted of her seven sons and seven daughters and mocked Leto for having only two, Apollo shot every son and Artemis every daughter.
RivalryAphrodite
Beyond Aphrodite's reach
Aphrodite can master every god and mortal except three goddesses: Athena, Artemis and Hestia. Young Hippolytus honoured only the huntress and scorned love, so Aphrodite made his stepmother fall in love with him and brought about his terrible death. Artemis could not save him; she could only swear revenge.