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((Artemis is sort of an experiment. Most of my characters are male and mild-mannered, getting milder and milder as they go on. But Artemis represents a mindset inimical to humanistic thought and experience: even more so now than when she was worshiped. It's very hard to find a way to show someone who is petulant and vengeful, who doesn't share most human experience, but who is at the same time entirely whole, as a goddess must be.

Which is all my way of saying I'm sorry if the writing is bad and the characterization is uneven. It's a weird kind of challenge.))


I never will marry,
I'll be no man's wife.
I intend to live single
All the days of my life.


***

Of Artemis we hymn...beginning with the time when sitting on her father’s knees – still a little maid – she spake these words to her sire: ‘Give me to keep my maidenhood, Father, forever....give me to gird me in a tunic with embroidered border reaching to the knee, that I may slay wild beasts...give me for handmaidens twenty Nymphai Amnisides who shall tend well my buskins, and, when I shoot no more at lynx or stag, shall tend my swift hounds. And give to me all mountains; and for city, assign me any, even whatsoever thou wilt: for seldom is it that Artemis goes down to the town....

So spake the child and would have touched her father’s beard, but many a hand did she reach forth in vain, that she might touch it [in supplication]. And her father smiled and bowed assent. And as he caressed her, he said: ‘When goddesses bear me children like this, little need I heed the wrath of jealous Hera. Take, child, all that thou askest, heartily....’ So he spake and bent his head to confirm his words.

--Callimachus, Hymn to Artemis

***

[After some arguments at Troy, Hera challenges Artemis to a fight and boxes her ears soundly:]

"Zeus has made you a lion among women, and given you leave to kill any at your pleasure. Better for you to hunt down the ravening beasts in the mountains and deer of the wilds, than try to fight in strength with your betters. But if you would learn what fighting is, come on. You will find out how much stronger I am when you try to match strength against me."... [Artemis] got under and free and fled in tears, as a pigeon in flight from a hawk wings her way into some rock-hollow and a cave.... So she left her archery on the ground, and fled weeping … Leto picked up the curved bow and the arrows which had fallen in the turn of the dust one way and another. When she had taken up the bow she went back to her daughter. But the maiden came to the bronze-founded house on Olympos and the ambrosial veil trembled about her. Her father Kronides [Zeus] caught her against him, and laughed softly, and questioned her:
‘Who now of the Ouraniones (Heavenly Ones), dear child, has done such things to you, rashly, as if you were caught doing something wicked?’

Artemis...answered him: ‘It was your wife, Hera of the white arms, who hit me, father, since hatred and fighting have fastened upon the immortals.' –Iliad 21.470

***

((For lots of information, see http://www.theoi.com/Summary/Artemis.html.))

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