Greek goddess, daughter of Zeus and Leto, twin sister of musical Apollo. The Romans called her Diana. She was born one day before her brother on the isle of Ortygia; she then helped her mother across the water to Delos, where Apollo was born. Because Artemis was born on Mount Cynthus, she is sometimes called Cynthia.
Like so many females in the western tradition, Artemis was associated with many contradictions. Her purview among the Olympians was the wilderness, the hunt and wild animals, and she was said to roam forests and wild lands, accompanied by her nymphs, looking for lions, panthers, hinds, and stags. But she didn't kill, as you might expect given her association with hunting, instead protecting them and assuring their successful reproduction. She had a bow and arrows made for her by the Cyclops and was often pictured with a crescent moon above her forehead; she was associated with Selene, goddess of the moon. She was a virgin - Zeus granted her eternal virginity when she was very young - as were her nymph attendants. In spite of this, she was associated with fertility and childbirth, perhaps because of the aid she gave her mother when she was but one day old. Artemis was said to protect women in labour, but if while giving birth women were hit by her arrows, they would die suddenly. (Artemis was fond of meting out a quick death for those who angered her.) She was said to be a healer, but also brought leprosy, rabies and gout.
Well, a beautiful virgin goddess, you know what's going to happen. Actaeon stumbled across Artemis and her attendants bathing naked one day while out hunting, and was naturally transfixed by their beauty. An enraged Artemis caught him in the act of peeping, so turned him into a stag, then set his own hounds upon him; they chased and killed him. And I heard a different story about Orion and Artemis than the one Causabon relates. As I understand it, he tried to rape her once, and she dispatched him swiftly, as was her wont. One legend says she shot him with her arrows, another that she conjured up a scorpion that killed him; in either case, after his death she sent him up to the heavens to become a constellation - you know, Orion - and his dog was similarly deployed, to become Sirius, the Dog Star.
Horny old Zeus once took the form of Artemis to trick one of her attendants, Callisto; he seduced her and she eventually gave birth to Arcas, ancestor to the Arcadians. But Artemis was enraged and merciless; she turned Callisto into a bear and shot her, after which she too was sent up into the heavens to become the Great Bear or Plough constellation. This dire reaction was quite in character for Artemis, who was very possessive and wrathful. She and Apollo once killed all the children of Niobe - a mere mortal - because Niobe boasted to Leto that she had had more children than Leto and so was better than her. (Artemis and Apollo were pretty close and often supported each other.) Artemis becalmed Agamemon on his way to besiege Troy after he had killed a stag in her sacred grove; she demanded that he sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to placate her and get the winds he needed to sail on. Some accounts say he did so, others that Artemis exchanged Iphigenia for a deer and made her into a priestess in one of her own temples.
Artemis was a minor player in the central Greek pantheon, but she was very popular in Asia Minor (now Turkey). A great temple built for her in Ephesus was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World; here she was mainly worshipped as a fertility goddess and was identified with the mother figure Cybele. She was represented with many nodes on her chest which some say are breasts and some say are eggs and some say are bull testicles sacrificed for her. That's confusing.
www.pantheon.org/articles/a/artemis.html
www.amazonation.com/Artemis.htm