ABSTRACT
A Cretan goddess similar to Artemis; the daughter of Zeus and Carme, a Cretan woman. Her name means ‘the sweet maid’. She was a mistress of wild animals and lived in wild places. In Greek mythology she was brought into the cult of Artemis and made one of her attendant nymphs. Like Artemis, she was known as Dictynna in Crete. The supposed meaning of this name (‘the lady of nets’, though it is also possible that Dictynna may mean ‘the lady of Dicte’—a mountain in Crete) is explained by the story of her ninemonth flight from Minos who wanted to make her his mistress. When he was finally about to seize her, she flung herself off the cliffs into the sea to escape him, and was caught in the fishermen’s nets. Then, with the help of Artemis, she fled in Andromedes’ fishing-smack to Aegina where Minos again sought her. But she had disappeared in a sacred grove of Artemis, and the people of Aegina founded a temple in her honour, where they worshipped her as Aphaia (‘the invisible’).
