This worship probably came to Laconia from Lemnos,[1594] one of its principal seats. In early tradition Lemnos was probably identical with Tauria,[1595] and the latter country derived its poetical name from the symbol of the bull, in the same manner as Lycia in later times took its name from the symbol of the wolf. In [pg 386] Lemnos also a great goddess was anciently worshipped with sacrifices of virgins; to which place the wooden image is said to have been brought from Brauron. This opinion becomes more evident by a comparison with the worship of Chryse. Agamemnon is said to have been the father of Chryse as well as of Iphigenia,[1596] and also, according to others, of a son Chryses, who went to Tauria with Orestes.[1597] Now it is certain that Chryse was a goddess, who had from early times been worshipped both at Lemnos and Samothrace. The Argonauts under Hercules and Jason were said to have sacrificed to her; and her ancient wooden image, raised over an hearth of unhewn stones, is often represented on ancient vases.[1598] Philoctetes is said to have been bitten by the viper[1599] when he discovered this altar.[1600] This goddess Chryse, who is also called Athene, was probably only a different form of her sister Iphigenia.
The worship of both these goddesses spread to other places, to the north of the Ægean sea. Thus on the coast of Byzantium there was an altar of Artemis Orthosia;[1601] and opposite to it, at Chrysopolis, was the tomb of Chryses, the son of Agamemnon, who, in his search after Iphigenia, was said to have died there.[1602] It is evident that this system of religious names was arbitrarily transferred to the genealogy of the Lacedæmonian [pg 387] kings, and most curiously interwoven with the Trojan mythology. The Greeks first became acquainted with Tauria by their voyages to Miletus; and they gave it a name already celebrated in their mythology. They found there some sanguinary rites of a goddess, which, by partly softening the name, they called Oreiloche;[1603] they also found human sacrifices, which they supposed to be offered to Iphigenia;[1604] their own worship of that deity bore so many marks of ancient barbarism, that they were willing to consider the northern barbarians as its authors. Yet it is certain that the Tauric Artemis was no more derived from the Taurians, than the Æthiopian Artemis from the Æthiopians,[1605] &c. In Asia Minor[1606] also there were modes of worship, which the Greeks compared with the rites of the Orthosian Artemis, of the similarity of which we shall presently treat.
7. Hitherto we have merely collected the fabulous narrations of the ancients, and attempted to show their connexion; we shall next speak of the ceremonies which attended the worship of this goddess or goddesses.
In the first place we will treat of the meaning and character of this truly mystical worship.[1607] We have [pg 388] a goddess adored with frantic and enthusiastic orgies, certain signs of an elementary religion, as well as with human sacrifices, which the character of the Greeks endeavoured only to moderate and to ennoble; it appears to have originally resembled the Arcadian worship of Callisto; but that it acquired at Lemnos, from the proximity of the Asiatic religion, a wilder and more extravagant form, which it retained after its return to Attica and Laconia. It cannot be a matter of doubt that Artemis Tauropolus is nearly identical with the Taurian goddess; this name of the goddess was established in Samos (where cakes of sesamy and honey were offered to her on solemn festivals),[1608] in the neighbouring island of Icarus,[1609] and at Amphipolis.[1610] The ceremonies were undoubtedly enthusiastic, as the goddess herself was considered as striking the mind with madness;[1611] and bloody, because the worship at Aricia was considered like it.[1612]
8. We are now to consider those temples of Artemis which had a purely Asiatic, and not a Grecian origin, and are wholly distinct, not only from the Doric, but also from the Arcadian worship of Artemis.
The Ephesian Artemis was doubtless found by the Ionians, when they settled on that coast, as already an object of worship, in her temple,[1613] situated in a marshy valley of the Cayster.[1614] From some real or accidental resemblance in the attributes of the Munychian and Ephesian goddesses, they called the latter “Artemis;” yet, wherever her worship spread, she was always distinguished by the additional title of “Ephesian.”[1615] Every thing that is related of the worship of this deity is singular and foreign to the Greeks. Her constant symbol is the bee, which is not otherwise attributed to Artemis; the other attributes, which adorned her statues in later times, are too far-fetched to admit of any conclusion being drawn from them. The bee, however, appears originally to have been the symbol of nourishment;[1616] the chief priest himself was called ἐσσὴν, or the king-bee: some of the other sacerdotal names are of barbarous, and not Greek derivation.[1617] The gods, by whom this great goddess[1618] was surrounded, must also have been of a peculiar description. It is not probable that Latona was originally called [pg 390] her mother,[1619] as Apollo is never joined with her.[1620] Her nurse appears to have been called Ammas.[1621] Hercules is said to have proclaimed her birth from mount Ceryceum.[1622] This Hercules may perhaps be some native demigod, possibly one of the Idæan Dactyli, whose names were, according to some, contained in Ephesian incantations, which were inscribed at the foot of her statues.[1623]
9. Thus much concerns the character of this worship, which appears, like an isolated point, projecting from a religious system, otherwise confined to the western parts of Greece.
As to its origin, the unanimous tradition of antiquity is that it was founded by the Amazons, This legend had probably been mentioned in some of the ancient epic poems before it was alluded to by Pindar;[1624] and that it was also preserved on the spot appears from the celebrated contest of Phidias, Polycleitus, and other artists, to make statues of Amazons for the Ephesian temple: lately also a sarcophagus was found near [pg 391] Ephesus representing the battle of the Amazons.[1625] The traditions respecting the foundation of the cities of Smyrna, Cume, Myrlea, Myrina, Æolis, Priene, Mytilene, and Pitane also make mention of the Amazons.[1626] With respect to the meaning of Amazons, it has rightly (in my opinion) been supposed that the idea of them was suggested by the sight of the innumerable female slaves (ἱερόδουλοι) who were employed about the temples of Asia Minor.[1627] According to Callimachus also the Amazons danced to the sound of the pipe round the statue which had been newly raised on the trunk of an elm-tree. It is also stated as an historical fact, that, even in the times of the Ionians, women of the Amazon race dwelt round the temple;[1628] although virgins only were permitted to enter the sanctuary itself.[1629] It appears therefore that the goddess upon whom these Amazons attended, being represented as a beneficent and nourishing deity, was likewise supposed to have the attributes of war and destruction; a double and opposite character, which we have traced in other branches of the worship of Artemis. As to the native country of the Amazons, who were supposed to have founded this worship, it does not seem to have been Phrygia, as they are stated in the Iliad to have come from the east of the Sangarius, and to have [pg 392] fought with the Phrygians.[1630] The Syrians, however, bordered on that people: and Pindar, who says that the Amazons led the Syrian army,[1631] fully coincides with those who fix their origin on the banks of the Thermodon, Chadesius and Lycastus along the coast of Themiscyra.[1632] The striking agreement of several authors in this statement, and its singular precision, render it of double importance. And what country could have been more probably the native place of the Ephesian Artemis, as well as of the warlike Hierodulæ, than Cappadocia; where there were, in the historical age, large numbers of sacred slaves, both male and female; where also there was an elementary religion, with frantic rites, and the principal divinity was at the same time a Bellona and a Magna Mater?
This same oriental worship had also been in other places adopted by the Greeks of Asia Minor. Among these are Leucophryne, who was worshipped in Phrygia, near a warm spring,[1633] and thence particularly honoured along the banks of the Mæander in Magnesia; and therefore also by Themistocles.[1634] She was represented in the same form as the Ephesian goddess.[1635] Her sacred animal was the buffalo.[1636] The Artemis of Sipylus was worshipped with wanton games, from which she [pg 393] was also called at Olympia (according to Pausanias) Cordaca.[1637] The Pergæan Artemis known all over Greece by her itinerant priests,[1638] and of the same form as the Artemis Leucophryne;[1639] with many others.[1640] It was in the true spirit of this worship that the musician Timotheus called Artemis “the raging and foaming, like a Bacchanalian;”[1641] and the tragic poet Diogenes in a beautiful though not a very accurate passage of his Semele speaks of the Lydian and Bactrian virgins, who with soft strains worshipped the Tmolian Artemis on the banks of the Halys.[1642]
I have now endeavoured to give the reader a general view of the different branches and forms of the worship of Artemis; in which some difficult and doubtful questions have of necessity been passed over: but I have preferred rather to reckon on the acquiescence of the reader in some uncertain propositions than to weary his patience by a detailed examination of all the debatable points.