shrine. At Halae in Attica the cult of Artemis Tauropolos saw a mock-human sacrifice
every year, associated with how – at least in Euripides’Iphigeneia amongst the Tauri–
Orestes had almost been sacrificed by Artemis’ priestess, his sister Iphigeneia. Every-
where we see the goddess angered, often in the wild or in connection with an animal
(a deer or a bear), and often demanding human sacrifices that somehow never seem
actually to have happened at any point where there is historical evidence. What
matters is the image and the ideology, in which the god consists, winding in and
out of Greek mythology and crossing cult sites, some active (Brauron), some lost in
the mists of time (Aulis).
Related to these phenomena are the cults we find at the mouth of the Alpheius, a
river whose plan to take her virginity had been foiled by a girls’ ritual in which
Artemis and the nymphs all smeared their faces with mud during an all-night festival.
Here the river flows grandly on from Olympia and reaches the final stages of its path
to the sea:
At its mouth, around 80 stades [12.5 km] from Olympia, is the grove of Artemis
Alpheionia or Alpheiousa [i.e., Artemis of the Alpheius] – it is said both ways. There is
a grand festival [pane ̄gyris] to this goddess at Olympia annually, just as there is to Elaphia
[Artemis of Deer] and Daphnia [Artemis of Laurel]. The whole land is full of Artemisia
[i.e., Artemisions, shrines of Artemis], Aphrodisia, and Nymphaia – amidst groves that
are for the most part full of flowers due to the abundance of water. And there are many
Hermaia on the roads and Poseidia on the headlands. And in the shrine of [Artemis]
Alpheionia there are paintings by Cleanthes and Aregon – by the former aCapture of
Troyand aBirth of Athene, by the latter anArtemis Borne Aloft on a Griffin. (Strabo
C343)I have quoted this passage, remarkably lyrical for the geographer Strabo (64 BC–
ca. AD 25), at some length for the wonderful sense that it gives of the place of the
gods in the imagination, lives, and environment of the Greeks, a place that cannot be
conjured up by statements that Artemis is goddess of the hunt.
Less lyrical, however, is the cult of Artemis Laphria (perhaps, the ‘‘Devouring’’) at
Patrae. There we find a stupendous procession culminating in the arrival of a maiden
priestess riding in a float drawn by deer! The altar, of tinder-dry wood, has already
been prepared. And the next day:
They throw, living, onto the altar edible birds and likewise all the victims, and in addition
wild boars and deer and gazelles. Some even bring the cubs of wolves and of bears, others
full-grown beasts. And they place upon the altar the fruit of cultivated trees. Then they
light the wood. At this point I have even seen, say, a bear or some other animal, either
forced outwards by the first onrush of the fire, or even escaping through brute strength.
Those who threw them on bring them back again to the fire. And they recount that no
one has ever been injured by the animals. (Pausanias 7.18.12–13)Out beyond this, Artemis may turn into a major goddess of the city, as in effect she is
in Patrae and in Aetolian Calydon, the scene of Meleager’s boar hunt and the origin
of the cult of Artemis Laphria. Her domination of a city is, however, more frequent in
Asia Minor, and this is what is represented by the cult at Ephesus (above). This, then,
is an area phenomenon.
52 Ken Dowden