Talk:Artemis

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Contents 1 Something Wrong? 2 Vandalism 3 Random nitpicks 4 Neopagans 5 just a question that kinda bothersme 6 Artemis in popular culture 7 Editing 8 Sources of myth 9 The Ephesian goddess 10 References

[edit] Something Wrong?

Someone seems to have been having some fun with this page... check line 11 and below...

Also look at the "Artimus in Art" section someone has vandalized it with adolesent info that couldn't possible be true.

[edit] Vandalism

Ilana of Konel and related edits seem to be vandalism, google turns up nothing, not to mention the childish comments that went with it.

The part about Endymion is incorrect. Selene was the lover of Endymion.

[edit] Random nitpicks

In the story of Adonis it says that: "This version is suspect because it implies that Artemis had lain with Ares and by virtually all accounts, she remained chaste throughout time." How can a version of a story be suspect? That implies that somehow one version is "truer" than another, which doesn't make very much sense in context. (Perhaps it is meant that that the version with Ares is corrupted from an older one?) It can be noted that it conflicts with many stories which name her chaste and virginal, but I don't see how it's "suspect."

Also, there's not really a good segue into the section devoted to stories of Artemis. I renamed one section to "Tales of Artemis and Men" from simply "Men" but there should be a proper introduction to the whole section. It should include information about who told the stories, how do we know of them, etc. --Starwed 02:59, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Also, there was what seemed to be an ad placed in the neopaganism section. The IP address which added it seemed related to the one it linked to, so I took that as confirmation and deleted it. --Starwed 03:11, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

The birth section starts by just repeating the introduction, and it is rather short. I remember the myth of the twin's birth being reasonably involved, so it should be expanded some. (I'm not sure I have time to get around to it, though. :( But there should be plenty of resources on this if someone feels like it.) --Starwed 03:37, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Someone had added to the Birth section, but it was rather badly phrased. There are definatley multiple versions of the birth story out there: In some Leto couldn't give birth on the ground, in others she needed a place where the sun had never shone. There was also a serpant which either chased her or guarded the island... I might actually go to the library and look some of this up eventually... --Starwed 23:20, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Neopagans

The nasty bit about "Neopagan sects [sic]" needs some serious work, amongst the article in its entireness. → Chèvredan∫ante ^{talk · contrib} 00:45, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

I.e. sources, etc. --→ Chèvredan∫ante ^{talk · contrib} 00:45, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] just a question that kinda bothersme

am i readin this wrong or did artemis have a relationship with ares or anyone else because most of the mithes state thate she disliked men plz let me knowe send a reply to kort88@hotmail.com

Quite right, the section begins with the assertion that Artemis sent the boar to destroy Adonis (correct), and that in another version it was Ares (also correct). The rest of the line and subsequent paragraph additions become confused: the bracketed "(who was a lover of Ares)" statement is reffering to Aphrodite, who was a lover of both Ares and Adonis, and not to Artemis. Both versions of the story are described in Apollodorus' Bibliotheke C3rd BC. I've now altered the content of this section to match the Greek source. Theranos 21:17, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Artemis in popular culture

This section has been repeatedly removed in its entirety as 'trivia'. I disagree, as I found some of the citations of the appearance of Artemis in poular culture interesting and revealing. It seems inconsistent to discuss modern-day worship of Artemis, but yet to dismiss as 'trivial' evidence of the interpretation and incorporation of the ancient myths into contemporary culture and media. Jpb1301 20:03, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Sometimes its better making a seperate page for this info such as "Artemis (popular culture)" and then make a heading and link on the main page. Otherwise some of the mythology entries get swamped with pop culture lists. So, perhaps that is a compromise.

EG Cerberus and Cerberus (popular culture)

[edit] Editing

So many scatter-brained "associations". I've removed the following texts:

• "She didn't yet know of her future."
• "In some Ancient Cultures Artemis was believed to be the male god of the plague, but this is not very widely known and sadly little is known about this."

If you have this page on your Watchlist, let's work to bring it up to the standard shown in some other Greek deities' entries. --Wetman 15:29, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I've cleaned it of vandalisms and deletions again. --Wetman 08:16, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sources of myth

I've removed some of the comments on classical sources from the page. Its a problematic area. Writers such as Callimachus, Hyginus, Anton. Lib., Ovid and others draw heavily on a host of older, now lost, Greek sources. Dating myths is extremely difficult! Case in point, Callimachus' Hymn to Artemis: some of these stories may have been sourced from the now lost Delian or other cult hymns to the goddess. --Theranos 18:53, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

...a suggestion that has been made by whom? Many items of "lost" documentation might be similarly conjured; a minor edit renders the information unchallengeable: "The childhood of Artemis is not embodied in any surviving myth." It doesn't seem very discerning to delete perfectly sound information, such as that the complete story of Siproites of Crete does not survive in any mythographer's works, or that the childhood of Artemis does not appear in any surviving myth, only in Callimachus' sentimental picture— and yet retain "There is a modern idea that Artemis once loved Orion, wanted to marry him, and was tricked into killing him...". The better sort of Wikipedians don't delete information whimsically. --Wetman 16:53, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I deleted the information because it is merely someone's opinion as to which classical sources present true "myths." Callimachus' others hymns contain many stories found in older sources, so there is no reason to disregard the hymn to Artemis. Antoninus Liberalis, is a mythographer, his work Metamorphoses is a collection of myths. I agree the section "modern idea ... " should be removed. I was not reviewing the whole article, merely looking to slightly improve some statements. You don't need to be so tetchy. Its a collaborative effort, I'm quite open to discuss it. --Theranos 20:00, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I've added some quotes from Callimachus' text to give a sense of the playful air. Even though his picture of baby Artemis charming her doting father is purely of his own poetic imagination, it is imbedded in a hymn that reveals his deeply learned grasp of mythology. The alert reader will doubtless sense the difference between what is urbanely charming in Callimachus and what is serious. Let's insert an apt quote or two from Callimachus' modern editors when we find them.-Wetman 06:38, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

That looks better. There is another online translation here as well: Callimachus Hymns. What do you think the best way is to list classical sources into these wiki articles? - as footnotes or within the body of the text of the article : and then either as content text or in the form of bracketed source notes (like the Smith Dict. of Classical Biography & Myth)? I've amended the Orion section anyway adding the source Hyginus on Istrus (a very obscure Greek poet!). --Theranos 07:28, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Ephesian goddess

Would it be better to create a seperate article on the Ephesian goddess instead of incorporating it with this article> Although the Greeks did identify the Ephesian with Artemis she was really an Anatolian divinity, related to the Phrygian mother-goddess. --Theranos 12:07, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

By all means cut and paste the relevant material here and expand it as a separate article, leaving a For main article, see... heading here. The reason we don't cannibalize articles to produce a myriad splinters, is that information is lost as context is progressively stripped away. --Wetman 18:18, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] References

I found and added a NYT reference for the sacrificial testes bit, but I've not been able to find the original academic paper where Gerard Seitele made the suggestion. Hope this is sufficient - if it's not, please leave a note on my talk page and I'll try to find it at my next visit to the library. Squeezeweasel 19:28, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

The New York Times article is in its travel section, with such blithe remarks as "Venus has long been popular with men because she so seldom bothered to dress"— which might not be suitable for noting in the Wikipedia article Venus (mythology). The article by Gerard Seitele or Seitel was published in 1979: a temporary glitch keeps me from accessing JSTOR. When I can, I'll introduce a precis of the article that offers some of Seitele's reasoning. "Gerard Seitele" and "Gerard Seitel" do not call up any hits at Google, most unusually for an academic figure, who one supposes publishes at regular intervals. The NY Times copy was inspired by the cheap heat-molded Turkish tourist mementoes of The Lady of Ephesus. --Wetman 21:07, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

There are no references to a Gerard Seitele at JSTOR The Scholarly Journal Archive, meaning that no articles by a "Gerard Seitele" are archived and that there are no mentions of a Gerard Seitele in archived articles. Can we get a source for these "bull's testicles", which are spreading around the Internet in amateur myth websites? Shouldn't we comment this out for the time being? --Wetman 22:34, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

All right. Gerard Seiterle is our source for this theory, which didn't take account of the gourd-shaped ambrer drops that had apparently decorated the archaic xoanon before the flood that destroyed the earlier "Artemision" (Anton Bammer, "A "Peripteros" of the Geometric Period in the Artemision of Ephesus" Anatolian Studies 40 (1990), pp. 137-160). I'll make a stab at reworking this material at Temple of Ephesus, with a precis here, from the peer-reviewed sources, for your emendations. --Wetman 23:42, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

The bull's testes theory is described in Mark Munn's The Mother of the Gods, Athens, and the Tyranny of Asia: A Study of Sovereignty in Ancient Religion. Although I don't believe he is the first to propound this theory. There is also a possible allusion to the representation in an Anatolian myth found in Clement of Alexandria's Exhortation to the Greeks, in which bull's testes are described being cast into the lap of the Mother goddess as a propitiatory offering. --Theranos 17:06, 10 February 2007 (UTC)