Artemis in Greek Mythology: Goddess of the Hunt

Artemis is the Greek goddess of the hunt, the wilderness and wild animals, and the protector of girls and of women in childbirth. The daughter of Zeus and Leto and the twin sister of Apollo, she roamed the mountains with her bow and a band of nymphs, and she chose never to marry. She was also one of the most dangerous gods to offend, as Actaeon, Niobe and Agamemnon all learned.

Artemis quick facts

Who are Artemis's parents, and where was she born?

Artemis is the daughter of Zeus and Leto, a Titaness whom Hera hounded across the Greek world during her pregnancy. The Homeric Hymn to Apollo says Leto bore Artemis on Ortygia and Apollo on Delos, naming two places, though ancient writers disagreed about where Ortygia was.

Apollodorus tells it differently. In his Library, Leto gives birth to Artemis first, and the newborn goddess immediately helps her mother deliver Apollo. That makes Artemis a midwife from her first hour of life, which explains a role that otherwise seems odd for a virgin: she is the goddess women prayed to in labor. Callimachus's Hymn to Artemis gives a matching reason. The Fates assigned her to women in childbirth, he says, because her own mother bore her without pain.

What are Artemis's powers?

Artemis rules everything outside the city walls: forests, mountains, animals and the young who have not yet become adults.

Her power had limits. In Iliad Book 21, when the gods fight each other at Troy, Hera mocks Artemis as a lion only against women, snatches her bow and beats her about the ears with it. Artemis runs crying to Zeus while Leto gathers up her scattered arrows. It is one of the rare comic scenes in Homer.

When her family was insulted, she did not hesitate. In Iliad Book 24, Queen Niobe boasted that she had many children while Leto had only two. Apollo shot Niobe's six sons and Artemis her six daughters. Ovid's Metamorphoses raises the count to seven and seven. Both poets end with Niobe turned to stone, still weeping.

Why did Artemis never marry?

Because she asked for it before she could walk properly. In Callimachus's Hymn to Artemis, written in the third century BC, the little goddess sits on her father's knee and makes a list of requests: to stay a virgin forever, to have as many names as her brother, a bow and arrows, a short tunic for hunting, a choir of nymphs, and all the mountains of the world. Zeus laughs, grants all of it and adds thirty cities for good measure. Pan then gives her hunting dogs.

The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite confirms the result. It names three goddesses that Aphrodite cannot bend to desire: Athena, Hestia and Artemis, who loves the bow, the hunt and the dance. This is the reason Euripides' Hippolytus works as a tragedy. Its hero worships Artemis and scorns Aphrodite, so Aphrodite destroys him. Artemis appears only at the end, too late to save him, and promises to take revenge on one of Aphrodite's favorites.

What happened to Actaeon?

The hunter Actaeon was turned into a stag and torn apart by his own hounds. Why he deserved it depends on the source.

In every version, the punishment is the same and is chosen with cruel precision. A hunter becomes the hunted, and the dogs he trained bring him down without recognizing him.

What happened to Callisto?

Callisto was a nymph in Artemis's band, and she lost both her virginity and her human shape. Ovid's Metamorphoses tells the best-known version: Jupiter seduced her disguised as Diana herself. Months later, when the nymphs bathed together, her pregnancy was exposed and Diana drove her out. Juno then turned her into a bear, and Jupiter finally set her in the sky as the Great Bear, with her son Arcas beside her.

Apollodorus collects rival versions. In one, Zeus turns Callisto into a bear to hide her from Hera, and Hera persuades Artemis to shoot the animal. In another, Artemis kills her simply for breaking her vow. The bear connection runs deep: at Brauron in Attica, Athenian girls served Artemis as little bears before marriage, a rite Aristophanes mentions in Lysistrata.

Why did Artemis demand Iphigenia?

Because Agamemnon offended her, and the Greek fleet could not sail for Troy until he paid. What the offense was, and whether the girl actually died, are among the biggest disagreements in Greek myth.

• The cause. In Aeschylus's Agamemnon, Artemis is angered by an omen: two eagles tear apart a pregnant hare. In Sophocles' Electra and in Apollodorus, Agamemnon kills a deer and boasts about it; Sophocles places the kill in her sacred grove.
• The outcome. Aeschylus has the chorus describe Iphigenia gagged and lifted over the altar, with no hint of rescue; the trilogy treats her as dead. In Euripides' Iphigenia in Tauris, Artemis swaps her for a deer at the last moment and carries her off to serve as a priestess among the Taurians.
• A third ending. Pausanias reports that Hesiod's Catalogue of Women made Iphigenia immortal, turned by Artemis into the goddess Hecate.

Is Artemis the goddess of the moon?

Not in the oldest sources. The moon belonged to Selene, who has her own Homeric Hymn, just as the sun belonged to Helios rather than Apollo. Artemis carried torches and was called light-bringer, but she was a goddess of the wild, not of the night sky.

The merger came later, especially in Rome. Catullus's hymn to Diana addresses her as Lucina, the birth goddess, as Trivia, goddess of crossroads, and as Luna, the moon, all in a single poem. That overlap with crossroads magic also tied her to Hecate.

In the sources

• Homer, Iliad (her humiliation by Hera, Niobe, the Calydonian boar she sends when King Oeneus forgets her sacrifice) and Odyssey (Calypso's complaint about Orion).
• The Homeric Hymns — to Apollo (her birth on Ortygia), to Aphrodite (her virginity) and the short hymns addressed to her.
• Callimachus, Hymn to Artemis — the fullest portrait of the goddess in Greek poetry.
• Aeschylus, Agamemnon; Sophocles, Electra; Euripides, Hippolytus, Bacchae and Iphigenia in Tauris.
• Apollodorus, Library; Ovid, Metamorphoses; Pausanias, Description of Greece, who describes the whipping of Spartan boys at the altar of Artemis Orthia.

Where the sources clash:

• Actaeon's crime. An innocent accident in Ovid, arrogance in Euripides, rivalry with Zeus in Acusilaus.
• Iphigenia. Sacrificed in Aeschylus, rescued in Euripides, made a goddess in the Hesiodic Catalogue.
• Orion's death. In the Odyssey, Artemis shoots him because the dawn goddess Eos fell in love with him. Apollodorus gives two different reasons: he challenged Artemis to a discus contest, or he assaulted Opis, a maiden from the land of the Hyperboreans.
• Niobe's children. Twelve in Homer, fourteen in Ovid.

In popular culture

• Percy Jackson and the Olympians. In The Titan's Curse, Artemis is captured and forced to hold up the sky, and her Hunters, immortal girls sworn off boys, become major characters. Rick Riordan's Hunters are a fair update of Callimachus's band of nymphs.
• Hades (Supergiant, 2020). Artemis is one of the Olympians who send Zagreus blessings, focused on critical hits, which fits the goddess of the deadly bow.
• Lore Olympus. Rachel Smythe's webcomic makes Artemis Persephone's close friend and roommate. That has a faint ancient echo: the Homeric Hymn to Demeter names Artemis among the goddesses gathering flowers with Persephone when she was taken.
• NASA's Artemis program. The agency named its return-to-the-Moon program after Apollo's twin sister, a choice that fits her later Roman identity as moon goddess better than her Greek one.

Keep exploring

Artemis shares nearly everything with her twin, so read Apollo in Greek mythology next, then see where she fits among all the Olympians in Greek gods and their powers. Compare her with the other maiden goddess in Athena, follow her family on the Greek family tree, or find out which Olympian you are with the Which Greek God Are You? quiz.