Artemis
Artemis, in the ancient Greek religion and myth, is the goddess of the hunt, the wilderness, wild animals, the Moon, chastity. Artemis is the daughter of Zeus and Leto, the twin sister of Apollo, she was the patron and protector of young girls, was believed to bring disease upon women and relieve them of it. Artemis was worshipped as one of the primary goddesses of childbirth and midwifery along with Eileithyia. Much like Athena and Hestia, Artemis is sworn never to marry. Artemis was one of the most venerated of the Ancient Greek deities and her temple at Ephesus was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Artemis' symbols included a bow and arrow, a quiver and hunting knives and the deer and the cypress were sacred to her; the goddess Diana is her Roman equivalent. The name Artemis is of uncertain etymology, although various sources have been proposed. According to J. T. Jablonski, the name is Phrygian and could be "compared with the royal appellation Artemas of Xenophon. According to Charles Anthon the primitive root of the name is of Persian origin from *arta, *art, *arte, all meaning "great, holy," thus Artemis "becomes identical with the great mother of Nature as she was worshipped at Ephesus".
Anton Goebel "suggests the root στρατ or ῥατ, "to shake," and makes Artemis mean the thrower of the dart or the shooter". The name may be related to Greek árktos "bear", supported by the bear cult the goddess had in Attica and the Neolithic remains at the Arkoudiotissa Cave, as well as the story of Callisto, about Artemis, it is believed that a precursor of Artemis was worshipped in Minoan Crete as the goddess of mountains and hunting, Britomartis. While connection with Anatolian names has been suggested, the earliest attested forms of the name Artemis are the Mycenaean Greek, a-te-mi-to /Artemitos/ and, a-ti-mi-te /Artimitei/, written in Linear B at Pylos. R. S. P. Beekes suggested. Artemis was venerated in Lydia as Artimus. Georgios Babiniotis, while accepting that the etymology is unknown states that the name is attested in Mycenean Greek and is of Pre-Greek origin. Ancient Greek writers, by way of folk etymology, some modern scholars, have linked Artemis to ἄρταμος, artamos, i.e. "butcher" or, like Plato did in Cratylus, to ἀρτεμής, artemḗs, i.e. "safe", "unharmed", "uninjured", "pure", "the stainless maiden".
Various conflicting accounts are given in Classical Greek mythology regarding the birth of Artemis and Apollo, her twin brother. However, in terms of parentage, all accounts agree that she was the daughter of Zeus and Leto and that she was the twin sister of Apollo. An account by Callimachus has it that Hera forbade Leto to give birth on either terra firma or on an island. Hera was angry with her husband Zeus because he had impregnated Leto but the island of Delos disobeyed Hera and Leto gave birth there. According to the Homeric Hymn to Artemis the island where Leto gave birth was Ortygia. In ancient Cretan history Leto was worshipped at Phaistos and, in Cretan mythology, Leto gave birth to Apollo and Artemis on the islands known today as Paximadia. A scholium of Servius on Aeneid iii. 72 accounts for the island's archaic name Ortygia by asserting that Zeus transformed Leto into a quail in order to prevent Hera from finding out about his infidelity, Kenneth McLeish suggested further that in quail form Leto would have given birth with as few birth-pains as a mother quail suffers when it lays an egg.
The myths differ as to whether Artemis was born first, or Apollo. Most stories depict Artemis as born first, becoming her mother's midwife upon the birth of her brother Apollo; the childhood of Artemis is not related in any surviving myth. The Iliad reduced the figure of the dread goddess to that of a girl, having been thrashed by Hera, climbs weeping into the lap of Zeus. A poem by Callimachus to the goddess "who amuses herself on mountains with archery" imagines some charming vignettes. Artemis, while sitting on the knee of her father, asked him to grant her several wishes: to always remain a virgin to have many names to set her apart from her brother Phoebus to have a bow and arrow made by the Cyclops to be the Phaesporia or Light Bringer to have a knee-length tunic so that she could hunt to have sixty "daughters of Okeanos", all nine years of age, to be her choir to have twenty Amnisides Nymphs as handmaidens to watch her dogs and bow while she rested to rule all the mountains any city to have the ability to help women in the pains of childbirth.
Artemis believed that she had been chosen by the Fates to be a midwife since she had assisted her mother in the delivery of her twin brother, Apollo. All of her companions remained virgins, Artemis guarded her own chastity, her symbols included the golden bow and arrow, the hunting dog, the stag, the Moon. Callimachus tells how Artemis spent her girlhood seeking out the things that she would need to be a huntress, how she obtained her bow and arrows from the isle of Lipara, where Hephaestus and the Cyclops worked. Oceanus' daughters were filled with fear, but the young Artemis bravely approached and asked for bow and arrows. Callimachus tells how Artemis visited Pan, the god of the forest, who gave her seven bitches and six dogs, she captured six golden-horned deer to pull her chariot. Artemis practiced with h
Oread
In Greek mythology, an Oread or Orestiad. They differ from each other according to their dwelling: the Idaeae were from Mount Ida, Peliades from Mount Pelion, etc, they were associated with Artemis, since the goddess, when she went out hunting, preferred mountains and rocky precipices. They were aggressive; the term itself appears to be Hellenistic, first attested in Bion of Smyrna's Αδὠνιδος Επιτἀφιος and thus post-Classical. The number of Oreads includes but is not limited to
Potamides
Potamides were a type of water nymphs of Greco-Roman mythology. They were assigned as a class of nymphs of fresh water known as naiads, as such belonged to a category that presided over rivers and streams. Potamides were identified by the names associated with the rivers of their origin such as the Anigrides, Amnisiades, the Pactolides from the Pactolus river, the Acheloides from the Achelous river; however they had their individual names and sometimes could be distinguished by the name of the country in which they inhabited. The rivers were the domains of potamides as well as of the nymphs Fluviales; every creek had its potamide, who as local divinities, like all the naiads, were daughters of the gods of rivers called Potamoi deities. The rivers of the marshy regions are described as having their nymphs, and many of these hellish potamides, the Avernales, were believed to be owners of prophetic ability, to express that gift to their chosen men. Like any nymph, potamides were considered subject to mortality but with a long life.
For the Greek historian Plutarch their term of life reached about 9720 years, according to Greek poet Hesiod there were about three thousand nymphs wandering on the world, their lives lasted several thousand years. Potamides showed themselves favorably inclined to young girls, removed the freckles from all who bathed in their streams. On the other hand, they had an aggressive behavior directed at young men coming near their watery territories, whom they dragged down to their abodes, it was believed by the ancients that they carried water for their river parents, as was quoted: "In the lonely hour of noon the naiads sat with their water-pitcher at the spring-sending forth from it the warbling brook."Regarded as a profuse class of minor female divinities, they were believed to inspire those that drank of their waters. Thus potamides, nymphs in general, were conceived to be endowed with oracular power, to inspire men with the same prophetic gift, to bestow upon them the natural talent of poetry.
Hence, as water is a necessity to all the creation, the water nymphs, along with the gods Dionysus and Demeter, were worshipped as providing life and blessings to all existing beings, this attribute is manifested by a diversity of epithets. Accordingly, in many parts of Greece, offerings of honey, milk, but never of wine, sometimes sacrifices of a lamb or goat were presented to these divinities. In Sicily was commemorated an annual celebration in their honor. Although they had no temples, the most beautiful spots in forests, gardens and so forth, were regarded as the favorite places of nymphs and invisible spirits, thus esteemed with special veneration. Smith, William. Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. Boston, C. C. Little and J. Brown. OCLC 405334. Black, Charles; the Encyclopædia Britannica, or Dictionary of Arts and General Literature XVI. Edinburgh Ad. and Charles Black. OCLC 162676989. Falck-Lebahn, Carl. Selections from the German Poets, with interlinear translations and complete vocabularies, a dissertation on mythology by F. B.
OCLC 559397945. Heck, Johann Georg. Iconographic encyclopaedia of science and art, Volume 4. New York, Garrigue, 1851-52. OCLC 2418489. Making of America Project. American Whig review, Volume 14. Nabu Press. ISBN 1-146-89198-9. Smith, Agnes. Olympus and its inhabitants: a narrative sketch of the classical mythology, with an appendix containing a survey of the Egyptian mythology in its relation to the classical. Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd. OCLC 456645462. Carr, Thomas Swinburne. A manual of classical mythology. London, S. Marshall, Co. OCLC 26920856. Crabb, George. Universal historical dictionary. London, Printed for Baldwin and Cradock, J. Dowding. OCLC 2831336. Lemprière, John. Bibliotheca classica: or, A dictionary of all the principal names and terms relating to the geography, history and mythology of the ancients. New York, W. E. Dean. OCLC 4151908. Rose, Herbert J.. Gods and heroes of the Greeks. London, Methuen. OCLC 1135331. Murray, J.. A Commentary, mythological and geographical on Pope's Homer, Dryden's Aeneid of Virgil.
London, J. Murray. OCLC 4819523
Pegasides
Pegasides were nymphs of Greek mythology connected with wells and springs those that the mythical horse Pegasus created by striking the ground with his hooves. According to Greek mythological tradition the winged horse Pegasus was the son of Poseidon and river god of the Greeks, equivalent to the Roman Neptune; the hero Bellerophon needed the untamed Pegasus to help him defeat the monster Chimera. Hence, while Pegasus was drinking at the spring Pirene in Corinth, Bellerophon caught him. Pegasus, struck a rock with his hoof, creating the spring Hippocrene on Mount Helicon; the name Pegasides means "originating from or linked with Pegasus". Hence, in poetry, the waters of Hippocrene and other springs that arose from the hoofprints of Pegasus are called Pegasides; the Muses are called Pegasides because the spring Hippocrene was sacred to them. Nymphs in general, if associated with springs and brooks, may be called Pegasides: thus Pegasis, the singular form, is applied by the Roman poet Ovid as a by-name or adjective to the nymph Oenone, daughter of the river-god Cebrenus.
Pegasis is used by the Greek author Quintus Smyrnaeus as the name of a nymph who had sex with the Trojan prince Emathion and gave birth beside the river Granicus to Atymnius. The latter was killed by Odysseus in the Trojan War. Adam, Alexander. A Summary of Geography and History, both Ancient and Modern: with an Abridgment of the Fabulous History of Mythology of the Greeks. London, printed for T. Cadell And W. Davies. OCLC 751291898. Anthon, Charles. A classical dictionary: containing an account of the principal proper names mentioned in ancient authors and intended to elucidate all the important points connected with geography, biography and fine arts of the Greeks and Romans. New York, Harper & Bros. OCLC 1395800. Erasmus, Desiderius. Poems: Volume 85-86. University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division. P. 438. ISBN 0-8020-2867-5. Gardner, James; the faiths of the world. Edinburgh, London, A. Fullarton & Co. OCLC 4914490. Lemprière, John. A classical dictionary. New York, E. Duyckinck, G. Long.
OCLC 5897265. Parada, Carlos. Genealogical Guide to Greek Mythology. Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology. 107. Coronet Books. ISBN 978-9170810626. Smith, William. A classical dictionary of biography and geography: based on the larger dictionaries. London: John Murray. OCLC 316433650. Walford, Edward; the Antiquary. Cambridge: ProQuest LLC, 2008. OCLC 663459113
Melinoë
Melinoë is a chthonic nymph or goddess invoked in one of the Orphic Hymns and represented as a bringer of nightmares and madness. The name appears on a metal tablet in association with Persephone; the hymns are of uncertain date but were composed in the 2nd or 3rd century AD. In the hymn, Melinoë has characteristics that seem similar to Hecate and the Erinyes, the name is sometimes thought to be an epithet of Hecate; the terms in which Melinoë is described are typical of moon goddesses in Greek poetry. Melinoë may derive from Greek mēlinos, "having the color of quince", from mēlon, "tree fruit"; the fruit's yellowish-green color evoked the pallor of death for the Greeks. A name derived from melas, "black", would be melan-, not melin-. Following is the translation by Apostolos Athanassakis and Benjamin M. Wolkow, of the hymn to Melinoe: I call upon Melinoe, saffron-cloaked nymph of the earth,whom revered Persephone bore by the mouth of the Kokytos riverupon the sacred bed of Kronian Zeus. In the guise of Plouton Zeus and tricked Persephone and through wiley plots bedded her.
This specter drives mortals to madness with her airy apparitionsas she appears in weird shapes and strange forms,now plain to the eye, now shadowy, now shining in the darkness—all this in unnerving attacks in the gloom of night. O goddess, O queen of those below, I beseech youto banish the soul's frenzy to the ends of the earth,show to the initiates a kindly and holy face. Melinoë is the daughter of Persephone and was fathered by both Zeus and Hades in their Orphic dual-god role. A major contributory factor surrounding Melinoe’s birth is the fact that Hades and Zeus were, at times, syncretised with each other; the Orphics in particular believed that Zeus and Hades were the same deity and portrayed them as such. Zeus was portrayed as having an incarnation in the underworld identifying him as being Hades and leading to Zeus and Hades being two representations and different facets of the same god and extended divine power; the Orphic Hymn to Melinoë references this by mentioning that Persephone was impregnated upon the bed of Zeus Kronion in the Underworld by the River Cocytus.
The hymn regarding Zeus taking on the form of Plouton before impregnating Persephone was much related to the nature of the way the gods were portrayed and worshiped in the Orphic Religion, as well as be the explanation for why both Hades and Zeus are considered to be the father of Melinoë. Melinoë is born at the mouth of the Cocytus, one of the rivers of the underworld, where Hermes in his underworld aspect as psychopomp was stationed. In the Orphic tradition, the Cocytus is one of four underworld rivers. Although some Greek myths deal with themes of incest, in Orphic genealogies lines of kinship, express theological and cosmogonical concepts, not the realities of human family relations; the ancient Greek nymphē in the first line can mean "nymph", but "bride" or "young woman". As an underworld "queen", Melinoë is at least syncretized with Persephone herself. Melinoë is described in the invocation of the Orphic Hymn as krokopeplos, "clad in saffron", an epithet in ancient Greek poetry for moon goddesses.
In the hymns, only two goddesses are described as Melinoë and Hecate. Melinoë's connections to Hecate and Hermes suggest that she exercised her power in the realm of the soul's passage, in that function may be compared to the torchbearer Eubouleos in the mysteries. According to the hymn, she brings night terrors to mortals by manifesting in strange forms, "now plain to the eye, now shadowy, now shining in the darkness", can drive mortals insane; the purpose of the hymn is to placate her by showing that the Orphic initiate understands and respects her nature, thereby averting the harm she has the capacity for causing. The translation of Thomas Taylor has given rise to a conception of Melinoe as half-black, half-white, representing the duality of the heavenly Zeus and the infernal Pluto; this had been the interpretation of Gottfried Hermann in his annotated text of the hymns in 1805. This duality may be implicit, like the explanation offered by Servius for why the poplar leaf has a light and dark side to represent Leuke, a nymph loved by Pluto.
The Orphic text poses interpretational challenges for translators in this passage. Melinoë appears on a bronze tablet for use in the kind of private ritual known as "magic"; the style of Greek letters on the tablet, discovered at Pergamon, dates it to the first half of the 3rd century AD. The use of bronze was intended to drive away malevolent spirits and to protect the practitioner; the construction of the tablet suggests. It is triangular in shape, with a hole in the center for suspending it over a surface; the content of the triangular tablet reiterates triplicity. It depicts three crowned goddesses, each with her head pointing at an angle and her feet pointing toward the center; the name of the goddess appears above her head: Dione and the obscure Nyche. Amibousa, a word referring to the phases of the moon, is written under each goddess's feet. Densely inscribed spells frame each goddess: the inscriptions around Dione and Nyche are voces magicae, incantatory syllables that are untranslatable.
Melinoë appears in a triple invocation, part of the inscription around Phoebe: O Persephone, O Melinoë, O Leucophryne. Esot
Evelyn De Morgan
Evelyn De Morgan, was an English painter whose works were influenced by the style of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. She was a follower of Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones, her paintings exhibit spirituality. She was born Mary Evelyn Pickering at 6 Grosvenor Street, to upper middle-class parents Percival Pickering QC, the Recorder of Pontefract, Anna Maria Wilhelmina Spencer Stanhope, the sister of the artist John Roddam Spencer Stanhope and a descendant of Coke of Norfolk, an Earl of Leicester. Evelyn was educated at home and started drawing lessons when she was 15. On the morning of her seventeenth birthday, Evelyn recorded in her diary, "Art is eternal, but life is short…" "I will make up for it now, I have not a moment to lose." She went on to persuade her parents to let her go to art school. At first they discouraged it, she was granted a scholarship at Slade. However, since the scholarship required that she draw nudes using charcoal and she did not care for this technique, she declined it.
She was a pupil of her uncle John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, a great influence on her works. Beginning in 1875, Evelyn visited him in Florence where he lived; this enabled her to study the great artists of the Renaissance. This influenced her to move away from the classical subjects favored by the Slade school and to make her own style, she first exhibited in 1877 at the Grosvenor Gallery in London and continued to show her paintings thereafter. In August 1883, Evelyn met the ceramicist William De Morgan, on 5 March 1887, they married, they spent their lives together in London. De Morgan, a pacifist, expressed her horror at the First World War and South African War in over fifteen war paintings including The Red Cross and S. O. S. Relative to artistic pursuits, money was unimportant to the De Morgans. Two years after his death in 1917, she died on 2 May 1919 in London and was buried in Brookwood Cemetery, near Woking, Surrey. In August 1875 De Morgan sold the Angel, her first exhibited painting, St Catherine of Alexandria was shown at the Dudley Gallery in 1876.
In 1877, De Morgan exhibited two works at Dudley Gallery and was invited to exhibit at the first Grosvenor Gallery exhibition. In October 1991, sixteen canvases were destroyed in a fire at Bourlet's warehouse. Tobias and the Angel Cadmus and Harmonia Ariadne at Naxos Aurora Triumphans, Russell-Cotes Museum, Bournemouth Night and Sleep Goddess of Blossoms & Flowers The Grey Sisters Phosphorus and Hesperus By the Waters of Babylon Sleep and Death, the Children of the Night Salutation or The Visitation, Love's Passing Dryad Luna The Sea Maidens Hope in a Prison of Despair The Soul's Prison House Love, the Misleader, private collection Medea, Williamson Art Gallery, Birkenhead Angel of Death, private collection The Garden of Opportunity Life and Thought Emerging from the Tomb, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool Flora Eos, Columbia Museum of Art, South Carolina The Undiscovered Country, Columbia Museum of Art, South Carolina Lux in Tenebris Boreas and Oreithyia Earthbound Angel of Death, private collection Helen of Troy Cassandra The Valley of Shadows The Storm Spirits The Poor Man who Saved the City The Love Potion The Cadence of Autumn Queen Eleanor & Fair Rosamund Death of a Butterfly Demeter Mourning for Persephone Port after Stormy Seas The Hour-Glass The Prisoner Our Lady of Peace The Worship of Mammon Death of the Dragon The Vision, private collection The Red Cross The Gilded Cage Deianera The Kingdom of Heaven Suffereth Violence Her works are held in Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.
Drawmer, Lois Jane. The impact of science and spiritualism on the works of Evelyn De Morgan 1870-1919. Buckinghamshire New University. Archived from the original on 16 June 2016. Harris, Lynda ‘Evelyn De Morgan: Symbolist and Mystic’, published on internet site Talisman Fine Art and Talisman Symbolist Studies, London-Cornwall. Marsh, Jan. Women Artists and the Pre-Raphaelite Movement. Virago. ISBN 978-0-86068-065-9. Marsh, Jan. Pre-Raphaelite women artists. Manchester City Art Galleries. P. 139. ISBN 978-0-901673-55-8. Official website "Evelyn De Morgan" at The Bridgeman Art Library Grave of Evelyn and William De Morgan Portraits of Evelyn De Morgan at the National Portrait Gallery, London 8 paintings by or after Evelyn De Morgan at the Art UK site Endless Digressions on Evelyn De Morgan by Kirsty Walker, Victorian Historian
Nymph
A nymph in Greek mythology is a supernatural being associated with many other minor female deities that are associated with the air, seas or water, or particular locations or landforms. Different from Greek goddesses, nymphs are more regarded as divine spirits who animate or maintain Nature for the environments where they live, are depicted as beautiful, young graceful maidens, they are divided into various broad subgroups, such as Aurai, Nereides and Dryades The Greek word νύμφη has the primary meaning of "young woman. Yet the etymology of the noun νύμφη remains uncertain; the Doric and Aeolic form is νύμφα. Modern usage more applies to young women at the peak of their attractiveness, contrasting with parthenos "a virgin", generically as kore "maiden, girl"; the term is sometimes used by women to address each other and remains the regular Modern Greek term for "bride". Nymphs were sometimes beloved by many and dwell in most specific areas related to the natural environment. E.g. mountainous forests by springs or rivers.
Other nymphs appeared in the shape of young maidens, were part of the retinue of a god, such as Dionysus, Hermes, or Pan, or a goddess the huntress Artemis. The Greek nymphs were spirits invariably bound to places, not unlike the Latin genius loci, sometimes this produced complicated myths like cult of Arethusa to Sicily. In some of the works of the Greek-educated Latin poets, the nymphs absorbed into their ranks the indigenous Italian divinities of springs and streams, while the Lymphae, Italian water-goddesses, owing to the accidental similarity of their names, could be identified with the Greek Nymphae; the classical mythologies of the Roman poets were unlikely to have affected the rites and cults of individual nymphs venerated by country people in the springs and clefts of Latium. Among the Roman literate class, their sphere of influence was restricted, they appear exclusively as divinities of the watery element; the ancient Greek belief in nymphs survived in many parts of the country into the early years of the twentieth century, when they were known as "nereids".
Nymphs tended to frequent areas distant from humans but could be encountered by lone travelers outside the village, where their music might be heard, the traveler could spy on their dancing or bathing in a stream or pool, either during the noon heat or in the middle of the night. They might appear in a whirlwind; such encounters could be dangerous, bringing dumbness, besotted infatuation, madness or stroke to the unfortunate human. When parents believed their child to be nereid-struck, they would pray to Saint Artemidos. A motif that entered European art during the Renaissance was the idea of a statue of a nymph sleeping in a grotto or spring; this motif came from an Italian report of a Roman sculpture of a nymph at a fountain above the River Danube. The report, an accompanying poem on the fountain describing the sleeping nymph, are now concluded to be a fifteenth-century forgery, but the motif proved influential among artists and landscape gardeners for several centuries after, with copies seen at neoclassical gardens such as the grotto at Stourhead.
As H. J. Rose states, all the names for various classes of nymphs are plural feminine adjectives agreeing with the substantive nymphai, there was no single classification that could be seen as canonical and exhaustive. Thus, the classes of nymphs tend to overlap. Rose mentions dryads and hamadryads as nymphs of trees meliai as nymphs of ash trees, naiads as nymphs of water, but no others specifically; the following is not the authentic Greek classification, but is intended as a guide: The following is a list of groups of nymphs associated with this or that particular location. Nymphs in such groupings could belong to any of the classes mentioned above; the following is a selection of names of the nymphs whose class was not specified in the source texts. For lists of Naiads, Dryades etc. See respective articles. Sabrina Burkert, Walter. Greek Religion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-36281-9. Larson, Jennifer Lynn. Greek Nymphs: Myth, Lore. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-514465-9.
Lawson, John Cuthbert, Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1910, p. 131 Nereids paleothea.com homepage Tomkinson, John L.. Haunted Greece: Nymphs and Other Exotika. Athens: Anagnosis. ISBN 978-960-88087-0-6; this article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed.. "Nymphs". Encyclopædia Britannica. 19. Cambridge University Press. P. 930. Theoi.com: Nymphs Theoi Project – List of Nymphs
