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Reviewed by:
  • From Artemis to Diana: The Goddess of Man and Beast
  • Ivana Petrovic
Tobias Fischer-Hansen and Birte Poulsen (eds.). From Artemis to Diana: The Goddess of Man and Beast. Danish Studies in Classical Archaeology: Acta Hyperborea, 12. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, University of Copenhagen, 2009. Pp. 585. $94.00 (pb.). ISBN 978-87-635-0788-2.

In the last several decades, the study of Greek religion focused on myth and ritual. The fundamental works of Walter Burkert, Jean-Pierre Vernant, and Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood contributed towards our understanding of the importance and meaning of rituals, the significance of psychology and anthropology in the study of ancient religious life, and the role of the polis as the fundamental framework in which Greek religion operated. The study of gods, largely neglected, has only recently come to the fore again: Routledge has launched a successful series of monographs entitled “Gods and Heroes of the Ancient World,” and edited volumes on individual gods—for instance Athena in the Classical World, edited by S. Deacy and A. Villing, Leiden 2001—or gods in general—such as J. N. Bremmer and A. Erskine (eds.), The Gods of Ancient Greece, Identities and Transformations, Edinburgh 2010—signal a renewing interest in the study of Greek gods.

The collection of articles under review, most of which were presented at a conference in Copenhagen in 2005, is situated between the two tendencies. The topic of the conference was Artemis, a manifold and multi-faceted divinity, of whom the editors hope to “offer a contribution to an overall picture. . . in time and space” (12). Apart, however, from the title and the fact that they share space in a single volume, the papers have very little in common. They present the work of philologists, historians, and archaeologists, but the overlap and synergy are minimal. The papers are not cross-referenced, so that redundancy and repetition abound (not even the two archaeological papers dedicated to the cult of Artemis at Brauron attempt to establish a dialogue). Even though they are arranged chronologically, so that the volume opens with a contribution on the cult of Artemis in Bronze Age Greece and closes with a discussion of the reception of the iconic statue of the Ephesian Artemis in the Renaissance and Neo-Classicism, the contributions in this volume do not form a book, but remain a collection of papers, each representing a different approach and addressing its own, narrowly specialized audience.

This is especially regrettable, since the study of this goddess demands an inter-disciplinary approach. As illustrated by her many cult epithets, Artemis was an extremely complex deity: a goddess of wild vegetation, animals, and hunting, but also of liminal areas such as marshes and other junctions of land and water. She presided over female rites of passage, childbirth, and childrearing; and epheboi sacrificed to her after several contests, confirming their status as young adults. In Sparta, she was a goddess of battle and male initiation. Artemis was also a city-goddess, especially in Asia Minor, where she assimilated the characteristics of the great eastern mother goddesses. Such a manifold divinity received a very one-sided portrayal in Greek literature, where she was initially almost exclusively presented as a goddess of hunting and death. The study of archaic and classical literary sources provides a distorted and fragmented picture of the goddess, presenting her almost as a marginal character, whereas she was actually one of the most popular Greek deities with a varied and extremely widespread cult.

Only a study which incorporates and combines archaeological, historical, and philological approaches can offer a balanced view of the role and significance of Artemis in the Greek world. In this respect, this volume presents a step back, as it is a collection of papers each firmly located in [End Page 154] its own individual discipline, illuminating only one particular aspect of the goddess’ cult in a particular locale or in a specific time period, and with none attempting to form a complete picture.

Moreover, rather than offering new approaches, the individual papers largely offer surveys of available evidence, mostly focusing on the material and aiming to reconstruct ritual practice. Some contributors should be singled out for...

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