Cults of Artemis in Ancient Greece
type: CreativeWork
description: Artemis was a cruel and wild goddess. Her mythological apparatus was replete with blood and death. Her cults displayed awe-inspiring elements of primitivism. Together with Dionysus, to whom she is mythologically and ritually related, she presents a riddle for the student who tries to understand her place in the Greek pantheon. In accordance with the modern alertness to the dangers of oversimplification lurking behind sweeping general accounts, I have chosen six particular Artemisian cults in three places of mainland Greece (at Sparta, Athens and Patras) upon which to focus my attention. In the aetiological legends of their foundations the Spartan and Athenian cults share a common origin (located by ancient writers in the distant Black Sea), the supervising deity being identified as Artemis Taurike. They also display remarkable signs of remote antiquity or, as has been proposed, of an archaizing process. Cruel rituals and beliefs associated with primitive magic are conspicuous in these cults but also feature prominently in the two cults in Achaia. The cult of Artemis Ortheia is comprehensively studied. All the existing ancient evidence, both literary and archaeological, is taken into account in an attempt to give a unified picture of the goddess without neglecting the di versity of disperse elements. By contrast, in the exploration of the three Attic cults selectivity prevails. Here again the emphasis is on what was common among the rituals enacted and the aetiological myths of their foundation, but not all ancient testimonies are considered to be of equal value. Consequently some sources are omitted and others overlooked in the discussion, for the additional reason that the Attic cults have been satisfactorily explored in recent publications. From the aforementioned local cults the focus is then shifted to the Homeric epics. The distinctive feature of Homeric religion is found in the endowment of divine powers with precise Forms and in the understanding of divine fo…
abstract: Artemis was a cruel and wild goddess. Her mythological apparatus was replete with blood and death. Her cults displayed awe-inspiring elements of primitivism. Together with Dionysus, to whom she is mythologically and ritually related, she presents a riddle for the student who tries to understand her place in the Greek pantheon. In accordance with the modern alertness to the dangers of oversimplification lurking behind sweeping general accounts, I have chosen six particular Artemisian cults in three places of mainland Greece (at Sparta, Athens and Patras) upon which to focus my attention. In the aetiological legends of their foundations the Spartan and Athenian cults share a common origin (located by ancient writers in the distant Black Sea), the supervising deity being identified as Artemis Taurike. They also display remarkable signs of remote antiquity or, as has been proposed, of an archaizing process. Cruel rituals and beliefs associated with primitive magic are conspicuous in these cults but also feature prominently in the two cults in Achaia. The cult of Artemis Ortheia is comprehensively studied. All the existing ancient evidence, both literary and archaeological, is taken into account in an attempt to give a unified picture of the goddess without neglecting the di versity of disperse elements. By contrast, in the exploration of the three Attic cults selectivity prevails. Here again the emphasis is on what was common among the rituals enacted and the aetiological myths of their foundation, but not all ancient testimonies are considered to be of equal value. Consequently some sources are omitted and others overlooked in the discussion, for the additional reason that the Attic cults have been satisfactorily explored in recent publications. From the aforementioned local cults the focus is then shifted to the Homeric epics. The distinctive feature of Homeric religion is found in the endowment of divine powers with precise Forms and in the understanding of divine fo…
author: Rangos, Spyridon
language: en
license: https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/ff792135-a6d5-4d0a-bff9-e241db86facd/download
license: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
date published: 1996-02-27
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:17Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.16539