Such a spot, favoured in olden time by Artemis and her attendant Naiads, was the Cretan river Amnisos[418]; and it was probably no mere coincidence, but a good instance rather of the continuity of local tradition, that in comparatively recent times her personality and perhaps even her old name were still known in the district. It is recorded that in the sixteenth century both priests and people of the district declared that at a pretty little tarn near the Gulf of Mirabella they had seen ‘Diana and her fair nymphs’ lay aside their white raiment and bathe and disappear in the clear waters[419]. It would have been highly interesting to know the name of the goddess which the Italian writer translated as ‘Diana.’ Though it is true that in Italy[420] Diana herself was still worshipped in magical nightly orgies as late as the fourteenth century, it is scarcely likely that the Italian name had been adopted in Crete. More probably the slovenly fashion of miscalling Greek deities by Latin names was as common then as now; and in this instance a piece of valuable evidence has thereby been irretrievably lost. Yet the traditional connexion of Artemis with this district of Crete warrants the assumption that the leader of the nymphs of whom the story tells was in personality, if not also in name, the ancient Greek goddess, and no Italian importation.
Distinct reference to the bathing of Artemis is also made in a story which has already been related in connexion with Aphrodite and Eros[421]. A prince, who had journeyed to the garden of Eros to fetch water for the healing of his father’s blindness, saw in the spring there ‘a woman white as snow and shining as the moon. And it was in very truth the moon that bathed here.’ The last sentence, provided always that it be free from modern scholastic contamination, is an unique example of the survival of Artemis in the rôle of the moon; while the healing properties of the spring in which she bathes offer a coincidence, certainly undesigned, with the powers of the goddess whom her worshippers of yore besought to ‘banish unto the mountain-tops sickness and suffering’[422].
Whether ‘the lady Beautiful’ is known now also in her ancient huntress-guise, is a point not readily determined. In Aetolia certainly I once or twice heard mention of her hunting on the mountains, but without feeling sure whether the word ‘hunt’ was being used literally or in metaphor. Expressions borrowed from the chase are not uncommon in the language, and the particular verb κυνηγῶ, ‘I hunt,’ is in the vernacular used of anything from rabbit-shooting to wife-beating. The injuries inflicted by Artemis on those who trespass upon her haunts might possibly be denoted by the same term. On the other hand it is not in the character of ‘the lady Beautiful,’ as it is in that of the ‘hunter’ Charos, to seek men out and slay them; men may fall chance victims to the sudden anger of the goddess, but they are the chosen quarry of the other’s prowess; he is a true ‘hunter’ of men, and, try as they will to evade him, he still pursues; but Artemis strikes none who turn aside from her path. I incline therefore to believe that the word ‘to hunt’ was intended literally when I heard it used of ‘the lady Beautiful,’ and that the ancient Artemis’ love of the chase is not forgotten by the Aetolian peasantry.
Such are the reminiscences of Artemis which I have been able to gather in a few districts of modern Greece. But it is clear that down to the seventeenth century the goddess was much more widely known. Leo Allatius[423], writing about the year 1630, after giving a good description of the Nereids, plunges abruptly into a long quotation from Michael Psellus, from which and from Allatius’ own comments on it some information about the Queen of the Nereids may be gleaned. The passage in question runs as follows, the comments and explanations in brackets being my own:—
‘ἡ καλὴ τὸν ὡραῖον. Supply ἀπέτεκεν. (Apparently a proverb, ‘Fair mother, fine son,’ to the usage of which Psellus gives some religious colour.) For the Virgin that brought forth was wonderfully fair, dazzling in the brightness of her graces, and her son was exceeding beautiful, fair beyond the sons of men. (Notwithstanding however the religious significance of the proverb, he at once condemns the use of it.) As a matter of fact, the phrase is due to faulty speech. For the popular language has perverted the saying. It is right to say καλὴν τῶν ὀρέων (‘fair lady of the mountains’); but the people have made the saying καλὴ τὸν ὡραῖον (‘fair mother, fine son’). (There is no distinction in sound, according to the modern pronunciation, between τῶν ὀρέων and τὸν ὡραῖον.) Hence we see that the popular imagination had once fashioned, quite unreasonably, a female deity whose domain was the mountains and who as it were disported herself upon them.... There is no deity called ‘fair lady of the mountains,’ nor is the so-called Barychnas a deity at all but a trouble arising in the head from heartburn or ill-digested food, ... which is also known as Ephialtes.’
Here Psellus is rambling in his dissertation as wildly as though his own head were affected by this demoniacal ailment. Which Allatius observing comments thus:—
‘What has Barychnas or Babutzicarius[424] or if you like Ephialtes to do with the fair lady of the woods or the mountains (pulcram nemorum sive montium)? From them men suffer lying abed; whereas attacks such as we have said are made by Callicantzarus[425], Burcolacas[426], or Nereid, occur in the open country and public roadways.... And Psellus himself knew quite well that the ‘fair lady of the mountains’ was nothing other than those who are commonly called the ‘fair mistresses’[427] (i.e. Nereids), who have nothing on earth to do with Barychnas and Ephialtes.’
The argument of this strangely confused passage is happily beside our mark, and we need not puzzle, with Psellus, over the demonology of dyspepsia. His interpretation of the phrase καλὴ τῶν ὀρέων I have even ventured to omit, for a devious path of wilful reasoning leads only to the conclusion that it means the tree on which Christ was crucified. The only method in his mad medley of medicine and theology is the intention to refute the popular belief in a beautiful goddess who haunted the mountains.
Some details of the belief may be gathered from Allatius’ criticism of the argument. Psellus mentions only the title ἡ καλὴ τῶν ὀρέων, but Allatius amplifies it in the phrase pulcram nemorum sive montium, implying thereby that in his own time Artemis—for it can be none other—was associated as much with woodland as with mountain; while her intimate connexion with the Nereids is adduced as a matter of common knowledge. The somewhat loose phrase by which Allatius indicates this fact—pulcram montium nihil aliud esse quam eas quas vulgus vocat pulcras dominas—must not be read in any strict and narrow sense. The beautiful lady of the mountains is, he means, just such as are the Nereids; but she is a definite person, distinguished as of old among her comrades by supreme grace and loveliness.
The statements of Leo Allatius, based as they are in the main upon his own recollections of his native Chios, find remarkable corroboration in a history of the same island written a little earlier by one Jerosme Justinian[428]. In the main the history is purely fabulous, taking its start from a point, if my memory serves me rightly, many centuries earlier than the Deluge; but the reference to contemporary superstitions may I think be trusted.