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Apollo is one of the Olympian deities in classical Greek and Roman religion and Greek and Roman mythology. The national divinity of the Greeks, Apollo has been recognized as a god of archery, music and dance, truth and prophecy, healing and diseases, the Sun and light, poetry, and more. One of the most important and complex of the Greek gods, he is the son of Zeus and Leto, and the twin brother of Artemis, goddess of the hunt. Seen as the most beautiful god and the ideal of the kouros, Apollo is considered to be the most Greek of all the gods. Apollo is known in Greek-influenced Etruscan mythology as Apulu.
Abae was an ancient town in the northeastern corner of ancient Phocis, in Greece, near the frontiers of the Opuntian Locrians, said to have been built by the Argive Abas, son of Lynceus and Hypermnestra, and grandson of Danaus. This bit of legend suggests an origin or at least an existence in the Bronze Age. Its protohistory supports a continued existence in Iron-Age antiquity. It was famous for its oracle of Apollo Abaeus, one of those consulted by Croesus, king of Lydia, and Mardonius, among others. The site of the oracle was rediscovered at Kalapodi and excavated in modern times. The results confirm an archaeological existence dating from the Bronze Age, as is suggested by the lore.
In ancient Greek mythology and religion, Artemis is the goddess of the hunt, the wilderness, wild animals, nature, vegetation, childbirth, care of children, and chastity. She was heavily identified with Selene, the Moon, and Hecate, another Moon goddess, and was thus regarded as one of the most prominent lunar deities in mythology, alongside the aforementioned two. She would often roam the forests of Greece, attended by her large entourage, mostly made up of nymphs, some mortals, and hunters. The goddess Diana is her Roman equivalent.
Diana is a goddess in Roman and Hellenistic religion, primarily considered a patroness of the countryside, hunters, crossroads, and the Moon. She is equated with the Greek goddess Artemis, and absorbed much of Artemis' mythology early in Roman history, including a birth on the island of Delos to parents Jupiter and Latona, and a twin brother, Apollo, though she had an independent origin in Italy.
In ancient Greek mythology and religion, Leto is a goddess and the mother of Apollo, the god of music, and Artemis, the goddess of the hunt. She is the daughter of the Titans Coeus and Phoebe, and the sister of Asteria.
In Greek mythology, Otrera was the founder and first Queen of the Amazons; the consort of Ares and mother of Hippolyta and Penthesilea. She is credited with being the founder of the shrine of Artemis in Ephesus.
Britomartis was a Greek goddess of mountains and hunting, who was primarily worshipped on the island of Crete. She was sometimes believed to be an oread, or a mountain nymph, but she was often conflated or syncretized with Artemis and Aphaea, the "invisible" patroness of Aegina. She is also known as Dictynna.
Eileithyia or Ilithyiae or Ilithyia was the Greek goddess of childbirth and midwifery, and the daughter of Zeus and Hera. In the cave of Amnisos (Crete) she was related with the annual birth of the divine child, and her cult is connected with Enesidaon, who was the chthonic aspect of the god Poseidon. It is possible that her cult is related with the cult of Eleusis. In his Seventh Nemean Ode, Pindar refers to her as the maid to or seated beside the Moirai (Fates) and responsible for the creation of offspring. Her son was Sosipolis, who was worshiped at Elis.
The Temple of the Delians is the largest of the three cult temples dedicated to Apollo within the temenos of the Sanctuary of Apollo on the Greek island of Delos. It is also known as the Great Temple or the Delian Temple of Apollo.
In Archaic Greece, an amphictyony, or amphictyonic league, was an ancient religious association of tribes formed before the rise of the Greek poleis.
Magnesia or Magnesia on the Maeander was an ancient Greek city in Ionia, considerable in size, at an important location commercially and strategically in the triangle of Priene, Ephesus and Tralles. The city was named Magnesia, after the Magnetes from Thessaly who settled the area along with some Cretans. It was later called "on the Meander" to distinguish it from the nearby Lydian city Magnesia ad Sipylum. It was earlier the site of Leucophrys mentioned by several ancient writers.
Brauron was one of the twelve cities of ancient Attica, but never mentioned as a deme, though it continued to exist down to the latest times. It was situated on or near the eastern coast of Attica, between Steiria and Halae Araphenides, near the river Erasinus. Brauron is celebrated on account of the worship of Artemis Brauronia, in whose honour a festival was celebrated in this place.
The Letoon, sometimes Latinized as Letoum, was a sanctuary of Leto located 4km south of the ancient city of Xanthos to which it was closely associated, and along the Xanthos River. It was one of the most important religious centres in the region though never a fully-occupied settlement.
A xoanon was an Archaic wooden cult image of Ancient Greece. Classical Greeks associated such cult objects, whether aniconic or effigy, with the legendary Daedalus. Many such cult images were preserved into historical times, though none are known to have survived to the modern day, except as copies in stone or marble. In the 2nd century CE, Pausanias described numerous xoana in his Description of Greece, notably the image of Hera in her temple at Samos. "The statue of the Samian Hera, as Aethilos [sic] says, was a wooden beam at first, but afterwards, when Prokles was ruler, it was humanized in form". In Pausanias' travels he never mentions seeing a xoanon of a "mortal man".
Claros was an ancient Greek sanctuary on the coast of Ionia. It contained a temple and oracle of Apollo, honored here as Apollo Clarius. It was located in the territory of Colophon, which lay twelve kilometers to the north, one of the twelve cities of the Ionian League. The coastal city Notion lay two kilometers to the south. The ruins of the sanctuary are now found north of the modern town Ahmetbeyli in the Menderes district of Izmir Province, Turkey.
Artemis worshipers were found all over the ancient Greek world. One of the most famous worshiping sites for Artemis was in Attica at Brauron. Artemis is said to have presided over all the biological transitions of females from before puberty to the first childbirth. "Young girls began to prepare for the event of the first childbirth at an early age. Even before menarche young girls danced for Artemis, in some places playing the role of animals. At the Attic site, or Brauron, in the rite called arkteia, girls representing the polis of Athens imitated she-bears, arktoi. "The initiation ritual for girls was called the Brauronia, after the location of Artemis' shrine at Brauron, in Attica, where the ritual, performed by girls before they reached puberty, took place." Brauron is the site where Iphigenia, Agamemnon’s daughter, is said to have established a temple to Artemis by decree of Athena, as told in Euripides’ Iphigeneia in Tauris.
The Temple of Artemis or Artemision, also known as the Temple of Diana, was a Greek temple dedicated to an ancient, local form of the goddess Artemis. It was located in Ephesus. By 401 AD it had been ruined or destroyed. Only foundations and fragments of the last temple remain at the site.
The Temple of Artemis Amarynthia was a sanctuary in Amarynthos in Euboea, dedicated to the goddess Artemis. It was a significant shrine of Artemis and arguably the foremost center of her cult in Northern Greece.
The founding myth of Marseille is an ancient creation myth telling the legendary foundation of the colony of Massalia, on the Mediterranean coast of what was later known as southern Gaul, by Greek settlers from Phocaea, a city in western Anatolia. Although the attested versions differ on some details, they all recount the story of the marriage of the princess Gyptis, the daughter of Nannus, chief of the native Segobrigii, to the Phocaean sailor Protis. On her wedding day, the princess chooses to marry the foreigner by giving him a bowl filled with wine or water during the feast.
Aristarche is a Greek mythological figure said by Strabo to have been an Ephesian woman of rank who went with the Phocaean colonists to Massalia, where she became a priestess of Artemis in the newly built temple.
References
- ↑ Paul J. Properzio, Evidence for the Cults and Mythology of Marseilles from Its Foundation to the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West from Ancient Literary, Epigraphical, Numismatic, and Archaeological Testimonia , Loyola University Chicago, 1981
- ↑ Strabo, Geography 4. 1. 4
- ↑ Strabo, Geography 4. 1. 8
- ↑ Strabo, Geography 4. 1. 5