ABSTRACT

My aim here is to evaluate the contribution of the Mistress of Animals to the persona of Artemis in the Archaic and Classical periods. Is she identical with the Artemis of Greek literature, myth and cult, as it is generally assumed, or does the divine persona of Artemis diverge a little from the Mistress of Animals reflecting further ideological developments of the Archaic and Classical polis?4 The answer is certainly closer to the latter alternative and Lloyd-Jones suggested precisely this when he wrote:

Artemis incorporated various local goddesses who had inherited certain features of the Mistress of Animals…but the virgin huntress, chaste and fair, who is already established in the Homeric epics, is very different from the Mistress of Animals.5