ABSTRACT
There is a general consensus among scholars that the temple compound of Artemis at Brauron on the eastern coast of Attica was the site in archaic and classical times of a female initiation rite referred to somewhat mysteriously in our extant sources as `` playing the bear for Artemis'' or `` serving as a bear for Artemis.''1 The most recent edition of the Oxford Classical Dictionary (1994) provides a cautious summary of the current state of interpretation (s.v. `` Brauron''):
Cult activity at Brauron was particularly associated with the arkteia, a ritual . . . in which young girls between the ages of five and ten `` became'' bears. . . . Modern scholars suggest that the ritual was a rite of passage which marked the physical maturation of pubescent girls and prepared them for taming by marriage by stressing their wildness.
