The Delos sanctuary was primarily dedicated to Artemis, Apollo's twin sister.

In Greek mythology Artemis was the leader ( ηγεμόνη: hegemone ) of the nymphs, who had similar functions with the Nordic Elves.

Apollo's sister Artemis, who was the Greek goddess of hunting, is identified with Britomartis ( Diktynna ), the Minoan " Mistress of the animals ".

Mythographers agree that Artemis was born first and then assisted with the birth of Apollo, or that Artemis was born one day before Apollo, on the island of Ortygia and that she helped Leto cross the sea to Delos the next day to give birth to Apollo.

This time Apollo was aided by his sister Artemis in protecting their mother.

He fell to the fatal wrath of Artemis, but the surviving details of his transgression vary: " the only certainty is in what Aktaion suffered, his pathos, and what Artemis did: the hunter became the hunted ; he was transformed into a stag, and his raging hounds, struck with a ' wolf's frenzy ' ( Lyssa ), tore him apart as they would a stag.

" In the version that was offered by the Hellenistic poet Callimachus, which has become the standard setting, Artemis was bathing in the woods when the hunter Actaeon stumbled across her, thus seeing her naked.

There are various other versions of his transgression: The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women and pseudo-Apollodoran Bibliotheke state that his offense was that he was a rival of Zeus for Semele, his mother's sister, whereas in Euripides ' Bacchae he has boasted that he is a better hunter than Artemis:

The mortal turned out to be a beautiful young woman, Amethystos, who was on her way to pay tribute to Artemis.

Her life was spared by Artemis, who transformed the maiden into a statue of pure crystalline quartz to protect her from the brutal claws.

In ancient Greece, the amaranth ( also called chrysanthemum and helichrysum ) was sacred to Ephesian Artemis.

In legend, Amarynthus ( a form of Amarantus ) was a hunter of Artemis and king of Euboea ; in a village of Amarynthus, of which he was the eponymous hero, there was a famous temple of Artemis Amarynthia or Amarysia ( Strabo x.

Preparing to depart from Aulis, which was a port in Boeotia, Agamemnon's army incurred the wrath of the goddess Artemis.

There are several reasons throughout myth for such wrath: in Aeschylus ' play Agamemnon, Artemis is angry for the young men who will die at Troy, whereas in Sophocles ' Electra, Agamemnon has slain an animal sacred to Artemis, and subsequently boasted that he was Artemis ' equal in hunting.

Either way, the girl's brothers killed the bear, and Artemis was enraged.

In Hellenistic times, especially during the 3rd century BCE, as Apollo Helios he became identified among Greeks with Helios, Titan god of the sun, and his sister Artemis similarly equated with Selene, Titan goddess of the moon.

Apollo and his sister Artemis can bring death with their arrows.

Artemis and Apollo Piercing Niobe's Children with their Arrows by Jacques-Louis David., Dallas Museum of Art.

While connection with Anatolian names has been suggested, the earliest attested forms of the name Artemis are the Mycenaean Greek a-te-mi-to and a-ti-mi-te, written in Linear B at Pylos.

Artemis ( on the left, with a deer ) and Apollo ( on the right, holding a lyre ) from Myrina, Greece | Myrina, dating to approximately 25 BC

A poem of Callimachus to the goddess " who amuses herself on mountains with archery " imagines some charming vignettes: according to Callimachus, at three years old, Artemis, while sitting on the knee of her father, Zeus, asked him to grant her six wishes: to remain always a virgin ; to have many names to set her apart from her brother Apollo ; to be the Phaesporia or Light Bringer ; to have a bow and arrow and a knee-length tunic so that she could hunt ; to have sixty " daughters of Okeanos ", all nine years of age, to be her choir ; and for twenty Amnisides Nymphs as handmaidens to watch her dogs and bow while she rested.

Okeanus ' daughters were filled with fear, but the young Artemis bravely approached and asked for bow and arrows.

Artemis practiced with her bow first by shooting at trees and then at wild beasts.

Alpheus, a river god, was in love with Artemis, but he realizes that he can do nothing to win her heart.

Artemis, who is with her companions at Letrenoi, goes to Alpheus, but, suspicious of his motives, she covers her face with mud so that the river god does not recognize her.

In yet another version, Adonis was not killed by Artemis, but by Ares, as punishment for being with Aphrodite.

She was beloved by two gods, Hermes and Apollo, and boasted that she was prettier than Artemis because she made two gods fall in love with her at once.

Artemis was furious and killed Chione with her arrow or struck her dumb by shooting off her tongue.

Hera struck Artemis on the ears with her own quiver, causing the arrows to fall out.

For example, some Byzantine coins of the 1st century BC and later show the head of Artemis with bow and quiver, and feature a crescent with what appears to be a six-rayed star on the reverse.

Either Artemis " slew Kallisto with a shot of her silver bow ," perhaps urged by the wrath of Juno ( Hera ) or later Arcas, the eponym of Arcadia, nearly killed his bear-mother, when she had wandered into the forbidden precinct of Zeus.

Compassionate and caring, she goes as far as healing Butler from fatal wounds sustained fighting a troll, even though he has been integral in the plan to hold her hostage — this act goes some way to changing both Artemis ' and Butler's views on fairies.

Dinocrates collaborated with Paeonius of Ephesus and Demetrius in reconstructing the Temple of Artemis — one of the seven wonders of the world — which had been destroyed by Herostratus in an act of arson on July 21, 356 BC, the same night, it was said, that Alexander was being born.

The Minoan goddess represented in seals and other remains, whom Greeks called Potnia Thēron ' Mistress of Animals ', many of whose attributes were later also absorbed by Artemis, seems to have been a mother goddess type, for in some representations she suckles the animals that she holds.

For the classical Greeks, Leto is scarcely to be conceived apart from being pregnant and finding a place to be delivered of Apollo and Artemis, for Hera being jealous, made it so all lands shunned her.

Though the Macedonians did not consider Philip a god, he did receive other forms of recognition by the Greeks, such as at Eresos ( altar to Zeus Philippeios ), Ephesos ( his statue was placed in the temple of Artemis ), and Olympia, where the Philippeion was built.

Later, for the Classical Greeks, " She is closely associated with Artemis and Hera ," Burkert asserts ( 1985, p 1761 ) " but develops no character of her own.

The deus ex machina salvation in some versions of Iphigeneia ( who was about to be sacrificed by her father Agamemnon ) and her replacement with a deer by the goddess Artemis, may be a vestigial memory of the abandonment and discrediting of the practice of human sacrifice among the Greeks in favour of animal sacrifice.

His remains were contained in a chest near the sanctuary of Artemis Kordax ( Pausanias 6. 22. 1 ), though in earlier times a gigantic shoulder blade was shown ; during the Trojan War, John Tzetzes said, Pelops ' shoulder-blade was brought to Troy by the Greeks because the Trojan prophet Helenus claimed the Pelopids would be able to win by doing so.

Indeed, much confusion occurred with subsequent generations ; the identity of Bast slowly merged among the Greeks during their occupation of Egypt, who sometimes named her Ailuros ( Greek for cat ), thinking of Bast as a version of Artemis, their own moon goddess.

Thus, to fit their own cosmology, to the Greeks Bast is thought of as the sister of Horus, whom they identified as Apollo ( Artemis ' brother ), and consequently, the daughter of the later emerging deities, Isis and Ra.

They noted that at Buto there was also a sanctuary of Horus ( associated by the ancient Greeks with Apollo ) and of Bastet ( associated with Artemis ).

The temple was constructed of marble and was built by King Croesus of Lydia to replace an older site destroyed during a flood, and it honoured a local goddess, conflated by the Greeks with Artemis, their goddess of the hunt, the wild, and childbirth.

Bendis was a Thracian goddess of the moon and the hunt whom the Greeks identified with Artemis.

Identity of names was not a guarantee of a similar cultus ; the Greeks themselves were well aware that the Artemis worshipped at Sparta, the virgin huntress, was a very different deity from the Artemis who was a many-breasted fertility goddess at Ephesus.

Greeks used to take the cake to the temple of Artemis.

These remarks of Pausanias find confirmation in the form of the cult in historic times, centering on a many-breasted icon of the " Lady of Ephesus " whom Greeks called Artemis.

At the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Lady of Ephesus, whom the Greeks identified with Artemis, was a many-breasted goddess encased in a tapering term, from which her feet protruded.

Bubastis was a center of worship for the feline goddess Bast ( also called Bastet ( emphasising the feminine ending t ), or even Bubastis ( after the city )), which the ancient Greeks identified with Artemis.

Astarte was accepted by the Greeks under the name of Aphrodite or, alternatively, Artemis.

To the Greeks it was sacred to the goddess Artemis, while in Hinduism it is linked to the goddess Saraswati.

Her hunting nature led to the Greeks, who later occupied Egypt for three hundred years, identifying Pakhet with Artemis.

It is known as the Cave of Artemis, because the Greeks identified Pakhet with Artemis, and the temple is subterranean.