ARTEMIS

Ἄρτεμις, goddess of hunting, the wild, children and childbirth, has a dominion over the moon.

Twin sister of the god Apollon (Ἀπόλλων) and daughter of Zeus (Ζεύς) and the titaness Leto (Λητώ). She was born in Delos or Ortygia (western Turkey, near Ephesus).

It is said that when she was three years old, her father Zeus asked her what gifts she would want, so she answered:

“Give me to keep my maidenhood, Father, forever: and give me to be of many names, that Phoebus may not vie with me. And give me arrows and a bow – stay, Father, I ask thee not for quiver or for mighty bow: for me the Cyclopes will straightway fashion arrows and fashion for me a well-bent bow. But give me to be Bringer of Light and give me to gird me in a tunic with embroidered border reaching to the knee, that I may slay wild beasts. And give me sixty daughters of Oceanus for my choir – all nine years old, all maidens yet ungirdled; and give me for handmaidens twenty nymphs of Amnisus 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. On the mountains will I dwell and the cities of men I will visit only when women vexed by the sharp pang of childbirth call me to their aid even in the hour when I was born the Fates ordained that I should be their helper, forasmuch as my mother suffered no pain either when she gave me birth or when she carried me win her womb, but without travail put me from her body.” Callimachus hymn III To Artemis (3)

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