The Homeric Hymn to Arternis (number 27) draws the essential features of her character. I sing about Artemis of the golden arrows, chaste virgin of the noisy hunt, who delights in her shafts and strikes down the stag, the very own sister of Apollo of the golden sword. She ranges over shady hills and windy heights, rejoicing in the chase as she draws her bow, made all of silver, and shoots her shafts of woe. The peaks of the lofty mountains tremble, the dark woods echo terribly to the shrieks of wild beasts, and both the earth and fishfilled sea are shaken. But she with dauntless heart looks everywhere to wreak destruction on the brood of animals. But when the huntress, who takes delight in her arrows, has had her fill of pleasure and cheered her heart, she unstrings her curved bow and makes her way to the great house of her dear brother, Phoebus Apollo, in the rich land of Delphi, where she supervises the lovely dances of the Muses and the Graces. After she has hung up her unstrung bow and arrows, she takes first place and exquisitely attired leads the dance. And they join in a heavenly choir to sing how Leto of the beautiful ankles bore two children who are by far the best of the immortals in sagacious thought and action. Hail, children of Zeus and Leto of the lovely hair, I will remember you and another song too. The goddess Leto mated with Zeus and bore the twin deities, Artemis and Apollo. The story of Apollo's birth on the island of Delos is recounted in the next chapter in the version given by the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, but there are variants. Traditionally Artemis is born first at a place called Ortygia (the name means Quail Island), which cannot be identified with certainty. In some accounts it is clearly not merely another name for Delos; in others, it is. At any rate, Artemis either immediately or very soon after her birth is able to help with the delivery of her brother Apollo, thus performing one of her primary functions as a goddess of childbirth early in her career (a role she shares with Hera and Eileithyia, as we have seen).

On other occasions Artemis can be closely linked with her brother Apollo, both appearing as vehement and haughty agents of destruction with their shafts of doom. Sudden death (particularly of the young) was often attributed to these two deities, Artemis striking down the girls, Apollo the boys. One of their most famous exploits concerns Niobe and her children, told at length by Ovid (Metamorphoses 6. 148-315). The women of Thebes bestowed great honor upon Leto and her twin children, crowning their heads with laurel and offering up incense and prayers in obedience to an injunction by the goddess herself. Niobe, however, was enraged by the whole proceedings and rashly boasted that she was more deserving of tribute than Leto. After all she was rich, beautiful, and the wife of Amphion, ruling by his side as the queen of Thebes in the royal palace of Cadmus. As the daughter of Tantalus and the granddaughter of Atlas, her lineage was much more splendid than that of Leto, the daughter of an obscure Titan, Coeus. In addition to everything else, Leto bore only two children, whereas she was the mother of seven sons and seven daughters. Indeed Niobe was so confident in the abundance of her blessings that she felt that she could afford to lose even a part of them without serious consequences. Leto was enraged at such hybris and complained bitterly to her children, Artemis and Apollo. Together the two deities swiftly glided down to the palace of Thebes to avenge the insulted honor of their mother. Apollo struck down all the sons of Niobe with his deadly and unerring arrows, and Artemis in turn killed all her daughters. Just as Artemis was about to shoot the last child, Niobe in desperation shielded the girl and pleaded that this one, her youngest, be spared. While she was uttering this prayer she was turned to stone and a whirlwind whisked her away to her homeland, Phrygia, where she was placed on a mountaintop. Tears continue to trickle down from her face of marble, as she wastes away. A rock on Mt. Sipylus in Asia Minor was identified in antiquity as the figure of Niobe. There are several stories that illustrate the hallowed purity of the goddess Artemis. A famous one is told about Actaeon (the son of Aristaeus and Autonoe), an ardent hunter who lost his way and by accident (or was it fate?) had the misfortune to see Artemis (Diana in Ovid's version) naked (Metamorphoses 3. 138-255): Actaeon first tinged with grief the happiness of his grandfather, Cadmus. A stag's horns grew on his head, and his hounds feasted on their master's flesh. Yet, if you look closely, you will find that his guilt was misfortune, not a crime: what crime indeed lies in an innocent mistake? There was a mountain on which had fallen the blood of beasts of many kinds. It was midday, when shadows are at their shortest and the sun is midway in his course.

Young Actaeon calmly called his fellow huntsmen as they tracked the game through the depths of the pathless forest: "My friends, our nets and spears are wet with the blood of our prey; we have had luck enough today! Dawn's saffronwheeled chariot will bring another day tomorrow and then we will renew the chase. The Sun now stands midway 'twixt east and west and with his hot rays parches the earth. Stop now the hunt, and take in the knotted nets!" His men obeyed and halted from their labors. A vale there was called Gargaphie, sacred to the huntress Diana; clothed with a dense growth of pine and pointed cypress it had at its far end a woodland cave which no human hand had shaped. Nature had imitated man's work by her own skill. She had created a natural arch of unwrought pumice and porous tufa; on the right from a murmuring spring issued a stream of clearest water, and around the pool was a grassy bank. Here would the woodland goddess rest when weary from the hunt and bathe her virgin body in the clear water. That day she came there and to one of her nymphs handed her hunting spear, her quiver and bow, and the arrows that were left. Upon another's waiting arms she cast her cloak and two more took off her sandals, while Theban Crocale, more skilled than they, knotted her flowing hair, although her own was unbound. Nephele, Hyale, Ranis, Psecas, and Phiale fetched water and poured it from the ample urns.

And while Diana thus was being bathed, as she had been many times before, Actaeon, Cadmus' grandson, his labors left unfinished, came to the grotto uncertain of his way and wandering through the unfamiliar wood; so fate carried him along. Into the dripping cave he went, and the nymphs, when they saw a man, beat their breasts and filled the forest with their screams. Surrounding Diana they shielded her with their bodies, but the goddess was taller than they and her head o'ertopped them all. Just as the clouds are tinged with color when struck by the rays of the setting sun, or like the reddening Dawn, Diana's face flushed when she was spied naked. Surrounded by her nymphs she turned and looked back; wishing that her arrows were at hand she used what weapons she could and flung water over the young man's face and hair with these words, foretelling dd his coming doom: Now you may tell how you saw me naked-if you can tell!'' And with this threat she made the horns of a long-lived stag rise on his head where the water had struck him, his neck grew long and his ears pointed, his hands turned to hooves, his arms to legs, and his body she clothed with a spotted deerskin. And she made him timid; Autonoe's valiant son ran away in fear and as he ran wondered at his speed. He saw his horned head reflected in a pool and tried to say "Alas"-but no words would come. He sobbed; that at least was a sound he uttered, and tears flowed down his new-changed face. Only his mind remained unchanged. What should he do? Go home to the royal palace? Or hide in the woods? Shame prevented him from the one action, fear from the other. While he stood undecided his hounds saw him. Blackfoot and clever Tracker first raised the hue and cry with their baying, the latter a Cretan hound, the former of Spartan pedigree. Then the rest of the pack rushed up, swifter than the wind, whose names it would take too long to give. Eager for the prey they hunt him over rocks and cliffs, by rough tracks and trackless ways, through terrain rocky and inaccessible. He fled, by ways where he had often been the pursuer; he fled, pursued by his own hounds! He longed to cry out "Actaeon am I; obey your master!" He longed-but could utter no words; and the heavens echoed to the baying hounds. First Blackie gored his back; then Hunter followed, while Hill-hound gripped Actaeon's shoulder with his teeth. These three had been slower to join the chase, but had outstripped the pack along mountain short cuts; while they held back their master the pack came up and all sank their teeth into his body. His whole body was torn by the hounds; he groaned, a sound which was not human nor yet such as a stag could make. The hills he knew so well echoed with his screams; falling on his knees, like a man in prayer, he dumbly looked at them in entreaty, for he had no human arms to stretch out to them. But the huntsmen, ignorant of the truth, urge on the pack with their usual cries; they look round for Actaeon and loudly call his name as if he were not there. At the sound of his name he lifts his head; they think it a pity that he is not there, too slow to see the sight of the stag at bay. He could indeed wish he were not there! But he is; he could wish to be the spectator, not the victim, of his hounds' cruel jaws. Completely encircling him, with jaws biting deep, they tear in fact their master's flesh when he seems to be a stag. Only when his life has ebbed out through innumerable wounds was it said that the vengeance was satisfied of the huntress Diana.

Opinions varied about the deed. Some thought the goddess had been more cruel than just; others approved, and said that her severity was worthy of her virgin chastity. Each view had good reasons to support it. The same insistence on purity and chastity, the same vehemence against defilement of any sort, appear again in the story of Callisto, one of the followers of Artemis (or Diana, as Ovid tells it, Metamorphoses 2. 409-507): As Jupiter journeyed back and forth to Arcadia he saw the Arcadian girl Callisto, and the fires of love were kindled in his bones. She did not care to draw out the' unworked wool nor to change her hair's style. She would pin her dress with a brooch, keep her hair in place with a white ribbon; with a smooth spear in her hand or a bow she marched in Diana's troops. No other girl who trod the Arcadian hills was dearer to the goddess-but no one's power can last for long! High in the heaven rode the sun beyond the middle of his course when Callisto came to a wood that no one throughout the years had touched. Here she took off the quiver from her shoulder and unstrung the pliant bow; she lay upon the grassy ground, her head resting upon the painted quiver. Jupiter saw her, tired and unprotected. "My wife," said he, "will never discover this affair, and if she does-well, the prize is worth her anger." So he disguised himself to look like Diana and said: "Dear girl, my follower, upon which mountain did you hunt?" Callisto sprung up from the turf. "Hail, goddess," said she, greater in my opinion than Jupiter-and let him hear my words!" Jupiter smiled as he heard this, glad that Diana was preferred to himself; he kissed the girl, more warmly than a maiden should. He cut short Callisto's tale of the forest hunt with an embrace and as he forced her showed who he really was. Callisto fought against him with all a woman's strength-Juno's anger would have been lessened could she have seen her-but what god is weaker than a girl, and what god can overcome Jupiter? He won; to the heavens he flies and she hates the wood that knows her shame; as she fled from it she almost forgot to take her quiver and arrows and the bow that she had hung up. Diana saw her as she moved with her followers along the heights of Maenalus, flushed with pride at the beasts she had killed, and called her. Callisto hid, afraid at first that Jupiter in disguise was calling her. But as she saw the nymphs and goddess go on together she knew it was no trick, and joined the band. Poor Callisto! How hard it is not to show one's guilt in one's face! She could hardly lift her eyes from the ground; no longer did she stay close to Diana's side nor be the first of all her followers.