In silence she blushed and showed her shame; if Diana had not been a maiden she could have known Callisto's guilt by a thousand signs. They say that the nymphs realized it. The horned moon was waxing for the ninth time when Diana, weary from the chase and tired by the sun, her brother's flaming heat, reached a cool wood; here flowed a babbling stream, gliding over its smooth and sandy bed. She praised the place; she dipped her feet into the water and it pleased her. "No man is here to spy on us," she cried: "let us bathe naked in the stream!" Callisto blushed; the others took off their clothes, she alone held back. And as she delayed, they stripped her, and then her naked body as her guilt were plain to see. She stood confused, trying to hide her belly with her hands; but Diana cried "Be off from here! Do not defile these sacred waters!" and expelled her from her band. Long before Juno had known the truth and had put off revenge until the time was ripe. She saw no cause to wait now; Callisto's son Arcas (his very name caused Juno pain) had been born, and when Juno's cruel gaze fell on him she cried: "So only this was left, you whore; for you to be pregnant and by this birth make known the wrong I suffer and my husband's shameful act! But I will have my revenge! I will take away the beauty that pleases you so much and gives my husband, you flirt, such pleasure.''

And as she spoke she seized Callisto's hair and threw her to the ground. Callisto spread her arms in suppliant prayer; her arms began to bristle with black hair, her hands to be bent with fingers turning to curved claws; she used her hands as feet and the face which once delighted Jupiter grew ugly with grinning jaws. Her power of speech was lost, with no prayers or entreaties could she win pity, and a hoarse and frightening growl was her only utterance. Yet her human mind remained even when she had become a bear; with never-ceasing moans she made known her suffering; lifting what once had been her hands to heaven she felt Jupiter's ingratitude, although she could not with words accuse him. Poor thing! How often was she afraid to sleep in the solitary forest before her former home; how often did she roam in the lands that once were hers! How often was she pursued over the rocky hills by the baying hounds; how often did the huntress run in fear from the hunters! Often she hid herself (forgetting what she was) and though a bear, shrunk from the sight of bears; wolves scared her, although her father, Lycaon, had become one.

One day Arcas, now nearly fifteen years old and ignorant of his parentage, was out hunting; as he picked a likely covert and crisscrossed the forests of Mt. Erymanthus with knotted nets, he came upon his mother. She saw him and stood still like one who sees a familiar face. He ran away, afraid of the beast who never took her gaze from him (for he knew not what she was); he was on the point of driving a spear though her body, eager as she was to come close to him. Then almighty Jupiter prevented him; he averted Arcas' crime against his mother and took them both on the wings of the wind to heaven and there made them neighboring stars. Callisto became the Great Bear (Arctus, or Ursa Major);

Arcas the "Bear Warden" (Arctophylax, or Arcturus, or Bootes). Ursa Major was also known as Hamaxa (the Wain). The story of Callisto is typical of a group of myths that provides etiology for individual stars or constellations. These stories (most of which belong to late antiquity) are told about various figures in mythology, and several of them, in one way or another, cluster about Artemis herself. One such story concerns Orion, a composite figure, about whom many tales are related with multiple and intricate variations. Orion sometimes appears as the son of Earth; in other accounts his father is Poseidon. He is traditionally a mighty hunter; he is, as well, involved in several love affairs. He amorously pursued Artemis (or Opis, a follower of Artemis, if, indeed, she is not the goddess herself) and attempted to rape her; he was run through by her arrows. Several stories concern Orion and the island of Chios and his adventures with the king of the island, Oenopion (the name means wine-face; Chios was famous for its wines). The many versions play upon the following themes. Orion woos the daughter of Oenopion, . Merope; he becomes drunk and is blinded by the king, and he regains his sight through the rays of the sun-god, Helius. In some versions, while he is clearing the island of wild beasts as a favor for Oenopion, he encounters Artemis and tries to ravish her. In her anger the goddess produced a scorpion out of the earth that stung Orion to death. Both can be seen in the heavens. Some say that Orion pursued the Pleiades (daughters of the Titan Atlas, and Pleione, an Oceanid), and they were all transformed into constellations; with Orion was his dog, Sirius, who became the dog star.

The origins of Artemis are obscure. Although she is predominantly a virgin goddess in the classical period, certain aspects of her character suggest that at some time she may have had fertility connections. Several of the nymphs associated with her (e.g., Callisto and Opis) were probably once goddesses in their own right and may actually represent various manifestations of Artemis' own complex nature. One of them, Britomartis, is closely linked to Crete, and certain aspects of her character could imply that she was once a traditional mother-goddess type. Artemis' interest in childbirth and in the young of both men and animals seems to betray concerns that are not entirely virginal. At Ephesus in Asia Minor, a statue of Artemis depicts her in a robe of animal heads, which in its upper part exposes what appears to be but may not be, a ring of multiple breasts. We should remember too that Artemis became a goddess of the moon in classical times. As in the case of other goddesses worshiped by women (e.g., Hera), this link with the moon may be associated with the monthly cycle and women's menstrual period. As a moon-goddess, Artemis is sometimes closely identified with Selene and Hecate. Hecate is clearly a fertility deity with definite chthonian characteristics. She can make the earth produce in plenty, and her home is in the depths of the Underworld.

She is a descendant of the Titans, and, in fact, a cousin of Artemis: Asterie, her mother, is Leto's sister; her father is Perses. Hecate is a goddess of roads in general and crossroads in particular, the latter being considered the center of ghostly activities, particularly in the dead of night. Thus the goddess developed a terrifying aspect; triplefaced statues depicted the three manifestations of her multiple character as a deity of the moon-Selene in heaven, Artemis on earth, and Hecate in the realm of Hades. Offerings of food (known as Hecate's suppers) were left to placate her, for she was terrible both in her powers and in her person-a veritable Fury, armed with a scourge and blazing torch and accompanied by terrifying hounds. Her skill in the arts of black magic made her the patron deity of sorceresses (like Medea) and witches. How different is the usual depiction of Artemis, young, vigorous, wholesome, and beautiful! In the costume of the huntress she is ready for the chase, armed with her bow and arrow; an animal often appears by her side and crescent moonlike horns rest upon her head; the torch that she holds burns bright with the light of birth, life, and fertility.

Whatever the roots of her fertility connections, the dominant conception of Artemis in the classical period is that of the virgin huntress. She becomes, as it were, the goddess of nature itself, not always in - tenns of its teeming procreation, but instead ofken reflecting its cool, pristine, and virginal aspects. As a moon-goddess too (despite the overtones of fecundity) she can appear as a symbol, cold, white, and chaste. In her role as a goddess of chastity, Artemis provid,es a ready foil for the voluptuous sensuality of Aphrodite. Artemis in this view becomes at one and the same time a negative force, representing the utter rejection of love and also a positive compulsion toward purity and asceticism. No one has rendered the psychological and physiological implications of this contrast in more human and meaningful terms than the poet Euripides in his play Hippolytus. The full story of the tragedy belongs in another context, but the essential nature of the conflict in terms of Artemis and Aphrodite will prove revealing here. ~ ~ h r o d iist een raged (and she tells us so in a typical Euripidean prologue); her power is great and universal, yet she is vehemently spurned by Hippolytus, who will have absolutely nothing to do with her.

The young man must certainly pay for this hybris, and the goddess uses his stepmother, Phaedra, to make certain that he will. Phaedra is the second wife of Theseus, the father of Hippolytus, and Aphrodite impels the poor woman to fall desperately in love with her stepson. Phaedra's nurse wrests the fatal secret of her guilty love from her sick and distraught mistress and makes the tragic mistake of taking it upon herself to inform the unsuspecting Hippolytus. The boy is horrified; the thought of physical love for any woman is for him traumatic enough; a sexual relationship with the wife of his beloved father would be an abomination. ~haedrain her disgrace commits suicide after leaving a note that falsely incriminates Hippolytus, whose death is brought about by the curse of his enraged father, Theseus. Artemis appears to her beloved follower, Hippolytus, as he lies dying. She promises him, in return for a lifetime of devotion that has brought about his martyrdom, that she will get even by wreaking vengeance upon some favorite of Aphrodite, and she will establish a cult in honor of Hippolytus as well-virgin maidens will pay tribute to him by dedicating their shorn tresses and lamenting his fate by their tears and their songs. Theseus realizes his error too late. At the close of the play we are left with a fascinating chain of enigmas in the Euripidean manner.

Is Hippolytus a saint or a foolish and obstinate prig? Has he destroyed himself through the dangerous, if not impossible, rejection of the physical? Are men at the mercy of ruthless and irrational forces inherent in their very nature, which they deify in terms of ruthless and vindictive women? Certainly the two goddesses play upon the basic character of the human protagonists. Aphrodite uses the essentially sensual Phaedra, and Artemis responds to the purity of Hippolytus's vision. Each man is created in his god's image, or each creates his own god according to his own nature. At any rate, the prayer with which Euripides introduces us to Hippolytus defines the essential nature of the young man and of Artemis; he stands before a statue of the goddess offering her a diadem of flowers (Hippolytus 73-87): "For you, my mistress, I bring this garland which I have fashioned of flowers plucked from a virgin meadow untouched by iron implements, where no shepherd has ever presumed to graze his flock-indeed a virgin field which bees frequent in spring. Purity waters it like a river stream for those who have as their lot the knowledge of virtue in everything, not through teaching but by their very nature. These are the ones for whom it is right to pluck these flowers, but those who are evil are forbidden. My dear lady, accept from my holy hand this garland to crown your golden hair. I alone of mortals have this privilege: I am with you and converse with you, for I hear your voice, although I do not see your face. As I have begun life in your grace, may I so keep it to the end."