"At mine Altars the youth of Lacedaemon in Sparta made due sacrifice."
What is this line in the Charge of the Goddess referring to? Lacedaemon was a prominent city-state in ancient Greece. According to Byzantine sources, some parts of the Laconian region remained pagan until well into the 10th centuryCE. Sparta was above all a militarist state where male Spartans began military training at age seven. Besides physical and weapons training, boys studied reading, writing, music and dancing. Spartan girls seem to have gone through a fairly extensive formal educational cycle, broadly similar to that of the boys but with less emphasis on military training. There was no society in the ancient world in which women enjoyed higher status, greater freedom or more economic power than in Sparta. Unlike Athenian women who wore heavy, concealing clothes and were rarely seen outside the house, Spartan women wore dresses (peplos) slit up the side to allow freer movement and moved freely about the city, either walking or driving chariots. Spartan law forbade the marriage of a girl until she was in her late teens or early twenties. Men were encouraged to marry at age twenty but could not live with their families until they left their active military service at age thirty.
The Elizabethan constitutionalist John Aylmer commended Sparta as a model for England, stating that "Lacedemonia [meaning Sparta], [was] the noblest and best city governed that ever was". Sparta was also used as a model of social purity by Revolutionary and Napoleonic France.
The Sanctuary of Artemis was one of the most important religious sites in Sparta. The oldest relics, pottery fragments from the late Greek Dark Ages, indicate that the cult had probably existed since the 10th century BCE. Originally, the cult celebrated its rituals on a rectangular earthen altar, built up by the ashes of successive sacrifices. At the very beginning of the 8th century BCE, the temenos was paved with river stones and surrounded by a trapezoidal wall. A wood and stone altar was then built as well as a temple.
Spartan boys were scourged on her altar. Cheeses were piled on the altar and guarded by adults with whips. Young men performed individual dances, holding sickles to represent agriculture. Choruses of girls also performed ritual dances. The presence of votive offerings attests to the popularity of the cult: clay masks representing old women as well as lead and terra cotta figures showing men and women playing the flute, lyre, or cymbals, or mounting a horse. Dedicatory inscriptions invoke Orthia, or Artemis Orthia, but never Artemis alone.
Artemis was connected with bloody sacrifices, and produced madness in the minds of men, at least the chorus in the Ajax of Sophocles, describes the madness of Ajax as the work of this divinity. It seems that separate local traditions of Greece are mixed up with the legends of some Asiatic divinity, whose symbol in the heaven was the moon, and on the earth the cow. The Asiatic Artemis was the personification of the fructifying and all-nourishing powers of nature. Her original character is sufficiently clear from the fact, that her priests were eunuchs, and that her image in the magnificent temple of Ephesus represented her with many breasts (polumastos). The whole figure of the goddess resembled a mummy : her head was surmounted with a mural crown (corona muralis), and the lower part of her body, which ended in a point, like a pyramid upside down, was covered with figures of mystical animals. The symbol of this divinity was a bee, and her highpriest bore the name of king (essên). Her worship was said to have been established at Ephesus by the Amazons.
The worship of Artemis was universal in all Greece, in Delos, Crete, Sicily, and southern Italy, but more especially in Arcadia and the whole of the Peloponnesus. The sacrifices offered to Artemis consisted of stags and goats; in Thrace dogs were offered to Artemis. Among the animals sacred to Artemis we may mention the stag, boar, dog, and others; the fir-tree was likewise sacred to her. The representations of Artemis in works of art are different accordingly as she is represented either as a huntress, or as the goddess of the moon; yet in either case she appears as a youthful and vigorous divinity. As the huntress, she is tall, nimble, and has small hips; her forehead is high, her eyes glancing freely about, and her hair tied up behind in such a manner, that some locks float down her neck; her breast is covered, and the legs up to the knees are naked, the rest being covered by the chlamys. Her attributes are the bow, quiver, and arrows, or a spear, stags, and dogs. As the goddess of the moon, she wears a long robe which reaches down to her feet, a veil covers her head, and above her forehead rises the crescent of the moon. In her hand she often appears holding a torch.
Orphic Hymn 36: To Artemis
"To Artemis, Fumigation from Manna. Hear me, Zeus' daughter, celebrated queen, Bromia and Titanis, of a noble mien: in darts rejoicing, and on all to shine, torch-bearing Goddess, Diktynna divine. Over births presiding, and thyself a maid, to labour pangs imparting ready aid: dissolver of the zone, and wrinkled care, fierce huntress, glorying in the sylvan war: swift in the course, in dreadful arrows skilled, wandering by night, rejoicing in the field: of manly form, erect, of bounteous mind, illustrious Daimon, nurse of humankind: immortal, earthly, bane of monsters fell, 'tis thine, blest maid, on woody mounts to dwell: foe of the stag, whom woods and dogs delight, in endless youth you flourish fair and bright. O universal queen, august, divine, a various form, Kydonian power, is thine. Dread guardian Goddess, with benignant mind, auspicious come, to mystic rites inclined; give earth a store of beauteous fruits to bear, send gentle peace, and health with lovely hair, and to the mountains drive disease and care."
Orphic Hymn 2: To Prothhyraea Artemis
"To Prothyraia [Artemis], Fumigation from Storax. O venerable Goddess, hear my prayer, for labour pains are thy peculiar care. In thee, when stretched upon the bed of grief, the sex, as in a mirror, view relief. Guard of the race, endued with gentle mind, to helpless youth benevolent and kind; benignant nourisher; great nature's key belongs to no divinity but thee. Thou dwellest with all immanifest to sight, and solemn festivals are thy delight. Thine is the task to loose the virgin's zone and thou in every work art seen and known. With births you sympathise, though pleased to see the numerous offspring of fertility. When racked with labour pangs, and sore distressed the sex invoke thee, as the soul's sure rest; for thou Eileithyia alone canst give relief to pain, which art attempts to ease, but tries in vain. Artemis Eileithyia, venerable power, who bringest relief in labour's dreadful hour; hear, Prothyraia and make the infant race thy constant care."
Blessings,
OathBound )O(
Reference: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.
