Artemis

**Artemis**, also known as **Diana**, is the Goddess of the Moon, Hunting, and Archery from Greco-Roman mythology. She is the twin sister of the Sun God Apollo and is one of the Twelve Olympians who rule over the pantheon from Mount Olympus.

## Overview

**Artemis** is the virgin goddess of the hunt, childbirth, fertility and the moon, also a member of the twelve Olympians, child of Zeus and Leto along with her twin brother, Apollo, the god of arts. Depicted as a beautiful young woman, she is always said to carry her silver bow and arrows, and one of her main tasks was to protect the forests and hills. The deer and the cypress were sacred to her. As one of the most venerated deity in the ancient Greece, her figure appears constantly in various myths, usually as the one who executes punishments upon mortals who broke their oaths or have offended the gods.

Being a virgin goddess, she is one of the few goddesses not affected by Aphrodite's manipulations. Artemis spent her childhood in the hills and forests, training with her bow and hunting beasts. As she grew older and more beautiful, she also grew proud and ruthless when slighted or dishonored, especially against those that claimed to be better hunters than she. Later in history, she started to be associated with the moon, overshadowing Selene, the personification of the moon itself.

All of her female followers are said to take a vow of maidenhood. Callisto was one of Artemis' loyal companions, but Zeus raped her and as a result, she is transformed into a bear by Artemis. Orion, another loyal companion who was also a valiant hero, was killed by a scorpion. Artemis then asked her father to resurrect him, and Zeus placed him among the stars. She is known as **Diana** in ancient Rome.

Artemis was worshiped as a many-breasted earth mother in Ephesus.

## Appearance

Artemis appears as a beautiful teenage girl, with smooth skin and a voluptuous figure, her breasts in particular are noted to be the same size as Hera and Demeter, two Goddesses of Fertility and Motherhood. She has emerald-green eyes and long blue hair with two long bangs, two strands on the sides, and a partly braided tail in the back.

She wore a white-and-blue outfit, long brown boots with a light-brown design, and a belt attached to a sash of white silken cloth with a dagger attached to it. She also wears golden bracelets and various golden hair accessories.

## Personality

Artemis is a focused, reserved, and reasonable goddess, but can be extremely stoic and pragmatic. She doesn't frequently lose her temper and speaks calmly with others, though she can easily be irritated by men. She prefers the company of her huntresses and animals to even that of other gods, passing most of her time hunting in the wilderness. She possesses a deep caring for young children, especially for maidens who she presides over.

Unlike her family, she is less easy-going and more understanding of humanity than the majority of gods, much like her half-brother Hermes. She is among the more sympathetic and selfless Olympian gods, weighting individuals by their actions and choices as opposed to their potential.

However, she is known to be quite sneaky and sometimes pranks her twin brother, or helps him and Hermes prank other gods with her tracking and stealth skills.

Though rarely, she can be very childish and immature much like other gods, often acting out her anger whenever her wishes are disobeyed, her authority is ignored by mortals, or when she doesn't get what she wants. For examples, she ruthlessly killed Niobe's seven daughters when their mother implied herself to be better than her mother, she cursed Aura to be assaulted by the next man who looked at her because she teased her for having large breasts, and she unleashed a giant boar into the Calydonian fields and induced a subsequent full-scale civil war after the boar's death all because king Oineus of Calydon failed to honor her with sacrifices and offerings in the harvest festival. All these actions show a formidable capacity for carrying grudges, much like her uncle Hades.

She is very prideful, a trait she inherited from her father Zeus. During the Trojan War, she underestimated Hera and actively challenged her in combat, only to be publicly humiliated and had to run and cry to Zeus for help. Another bad trait of hers is that she had major difficulty admitting she loses, evident with how she whined to Apollo when she was defeated by Orion in a archery contest, which resulted in him killing the demigod with a giant scorpion as a result.

Similar to her father, she is a natural flirt, though most of her flirtatious actions seem to be purely accidental rather than intentional, which some see her as a womanizing goddess much to her dismay and confusion. In Chapter XXX, Artemis was stated by Apollo to have much more experience with women than any other Younger Olympians, including him, regardless of how much he hates to admit it.

### Roman Form

Artemis can change into her Roman counterpart of **Diana**. As Diana, she becomes more disciplined, militaristic, and warlike than her Greek counterpart. The Greeks envisioned Artemis as an independent and vigorous goddess of the wilderness and hunt while the Romans depicted Diana more closely associated as the goddess of the moon than her Greek form.

## Weaknesses

### Harming, Trapping, & Banishing

* **Witchcraft**: As witchcraft is a form of magic wielded by witches to oppose those of heavenly nature, pagan gods such as Artemis are susceptible by witchery. There are many witchery spells and rituals that can be used to trap, weaken, and hurt her, with some rituals rumored to be capable of even killing immortals such as the pagan gods.
* **CCelestial Weapons**: Weapons made out of sacred metals, such as Celestial Bronze or Imperial Gold, can be used against the majority of supernatural beings, including pagan gods such as Artemis.
* **Lack of Worship & Offerings**: As a pagan goddess, Artemis gains more power from the prayers, offerings, and sacrifices from mortal devotees, and is dependent on it to maintain her immense divinity. If she stops gaining offerings from her loyal followers, her powers may become immensely weakened. Due to her essence being tied to the Western Civilization, she can gain power from those associated and symbolized by her divine domains, or associated with her or the myths surrounding her.

### Killing

* **Divine Weapons**: The divine weapons of the gods, which are crafted from sacred metals and are imbued with their wielders' divinity, can be used to kill or injure fellow immortal gods like Artemis. However, due to her immense power, only a god’s Symbol of Power is capable of killing her.
* **Enochian Weapons**: Artemis can be killed using weapons made out of Enochian metals.
	+ **Longinus**: As the Longinus are Sacred Gears made out of Enochian metals of the highest-ranking, forged by Heavens' forges with the highest-quality Enochian technology and are imbued with fragments of the Biblical God's divinity, those with enough skills and experience can absolutely and permanently killed Artemis, to the point where she can never be reborn or resurrected again.
* **Faustian Weapons**: Artemis can be killed using weapons made out of Faustian metals.
* **Primordials' Weapons**: Weapons created and wielded by primordial entities can be used to permanently and absolutely obliterate every and any being in existence but other primordial entities, erasing their entire existence from the worlds so that they can never be reborn, or resurrected again without being saved by God's omnipotence.

## Trivia

* Her birthday is on May 24th.
* According to one source, Artemis was born a day before Apollo and then served as a guardian to him, which provided a context for her desire to protect and nurture.
* It is theorized that she might originally be worshipped as a bear goddess.
* Her attributes are a silver bow, arrows, and the crescent moon (or the full moon).
	+ Her sacred animals are the deers, stags, bears, guinea fowl, bee, snakes and hunting dogs.
	+ Her sacred plants are the flowering almond, hazel, ranunculus, honeysuckle, thistle, fir and cypress.
* The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus was considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
	+ In the temple, she is worshipped as a multi-breasts mother goddess similar to that of the Anatolian earth goddess Cybele, though this might have been a case of syncretism, or *interpretatio graeca*.
* She shares jurisdiction over childbirth and midwifery with her half-sister Eileithyia.
* She has a collection of furs belonging to many creatures, some of which may be extinct.
* In Homer's *Iliad*, she is referred to as *potnia thērōn* (in Greek πότνια θηρῶν, “mistress of beasts”), referring to her role as a hunter and protector of wild creatures.
* Though she is said to be the protector of young women, she is said to have been appeased of crimes by the sacrifice of young women, such as Agamemnon's daughter, Iphigenia.
	+ However, some versions say Artemis took Iphigenia from the pyre seconds before it was lit without Agamemnon or his men being aware. Artemis could have only pretended to want young women sacrificed while secretly rescuing them, not just from the pyres but from whatever society they lived in.
* Ancient Greek tradition held that Artemis and Apollo were born on the sixth and seventh day of Thargelion, the eleventh month in the Athenian calendar, and the Thargelia festival was held every year to commemorate the occasion.
* According to many myths, the Hunters of Artemis are nymphs and she is the source of their lifeforce.
* One source says Zeus put Orion in the stars at Artemis' request.
* In myth, the sole reason Artemis was sometimes considered a goddess of the moon was because others perceived her to be either Selene or Hecate.
* A minor planet, (105) Artemis, a lunar crater, the Artemis Chasma and the Artemis Corona (both on Venus) have all been named after her.
	+ NASA announced that their mission to the moon in 2024 would be named after her.
	+ Diana, a crater on the moon, is named after her Roman counterpart.
	+ 78 Diana, an asteroid, is named after her Roman counterpart.
* In mythology, despite being believed to be the one who brought disease upon women, she was also believed to be the one who relieved them of it.