In many if not most Greek cities, adolescent girls danced for Artemis. These dances had social as well as religious functions, as they signaled a girl’s readiness for marriage and made her visible to potential suitors. Also, transitions in the female life cycle governed by Artemis were linked to the prosperity and safety of the community as a whole. Many of Artemis’ sanctuaries were located on the borders of a given polis, in lands that formed territorial boundaries. Rituals conducted safely by girls at these vulnerable sites demonstrated the strength of the polis, just as the very placement of such border sanctuaries asserted territorial claims. Likewise, a number of myths and legends draw a clear analogy between the rape of young women celebrating Artemis’ festivals and the penetration of polis territory by enemies. The Spartans traced the origins of their hostility toward the Messenians to such an incident. During a festival, they said, Spartan girls were raped in the sanctuary of Artemis Limnatis (of the Marsh), which stood on the borderlands between Lakonia and Messenia and was disputed territory.13
Artemis’ concern for the nurture of human young overlaps with her control over the fertility of the natural world. Particularly in the Peloponnese, where her cults are extremely numerous, Artemis has the characteristics of a nature goddess who promotes the growth of vegetation and is to be found in green, moist places. The cult of Artemis Karyatis (of the Nut Tree) was famed throughout Greece for its dancing maidens, often said to be the inspiration for the columns in maiden form (caryatids) that support the porch of the Athenian Erechtheion and other ancient buildings. Located on the border between Lakonia and Arkadia, Karyai was sacred to Artemis and the nymphs who served as her companions. The girls of Lakonia made an annual pilgrimage there to dance “a traditional local dance” before the goddess’ statue, which in Pausanias’ day stood in the open air. Here too, the maidens were vulnerable: it was said that the Messenian general Aristomenes and his men kidnapped the daughters of their Lakonian enemies from this sanctuary.14
As a virgin goddess, Artemis is not asexual but fosters a constant awareness of the maturing sexuality of the community’s adolescent girls. From a patriarchal perspective, the asset of female fertility is always complicated by fears of poaching by rival males (or the desire to engage in such poaching), which helps to explain the regular appearance of the rape motif in Artemis’ myths and cults. Still another Peloponnesian cult, that of Artemis Alpheiaia (of the river Alpheios) at Letrinoi, incorporated a legend about the attempted rape of Artemis by the local river god. Artemis escaped recognition by daubing her own face and those of her nymph companions with river mud, an act that probably reflects a lost ritual practice. Artemis and Alpheios shared an altar at Olympia, and the cult spread to the Dorian colony of Syracuse in Sicily, where Artemis Potamia (of the River) was worshiped at a spring said to be the local manifestation of the river Alpheios.15
World History
