Page:Myth, Ritual, and Religion (Volume 2).djvu/231

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TAURIC ARTEMIS.
217

Horns grow from the shoulders of Artemis Tauropolos, on the coins of Amppipolis, and on Macedonian coins she rides on a bull. According to Decharme,[1] the Taurian Artemis, with her hideous rites, was confused, by an accidental resemblance of names, with this Artemis Tauropolos, whose "symbol" was a bull, and who (whatever we may think of the symbolic hypothesis) used bulls as her "vehicle," and wore bull's horns. Müller, on the other hand,[2] believes the Greeks found in Tauria (i.e., Lemnos) a goddess with bloody "rites, whom they identified, by reason of those very human sacrifices, with their own Artemis Iphigenia." Their own worship of that deity bore so many marks of ancient barbarism that they were willing to consider the northern barbarians as its authors. Yet it is possible that the Tauric Artemis was no more derived from the Taurians than Artemis Æthiopia from the Æthiopians.

The nature of the famous Diana of the Ephesians, or Artemis of Ephesus, is probably quite distinct in origin from either the Artemis of Arcadia and Attica or the deity of literary creeds. As late as the time of Tacitus[3] the Ephesians maintained that Leto's twins had been born in their territory. "The first which showed themselves in the senate were the Ephesians, declaring that Diana and Apollo were not born in the island Delos, as the common people did believe; and there was in their country a river called Cenchrius, and a wood called Ortegia, where Latona, being great

  1. Mythol. de la Grece, p. 137.
  2. Op. cit., ii, 9, 7.
  3. Annals, iii. 61.