Niobe, queen of Thebes, once boasted that she was better than Leto because she had many children while the goddess had but two. Artemis and Apollo avenged this insult to their mother by killing all or most of Niobe's children with their arrows. The weeping Niobe was transformed into stone, in which form she continued to weep.
When Apollo noticed that Artemis was spending a great deal of time hunting with the giant Orion, he decided to put an end to the relationship. He challenged Artemis to prove her skill at archery by shooting at an object floating far out at sea. Her shot was perfect. The target turned out to be the head of Orion.
Artemis is generally depicted as a young woman clad in buckskins, carrying a bow and a quiver of arrows. She is often accompanied by wild creatures such as a stag or she-bear.
Euripides' Hippolytus shows her in opposition to Aphrodite. Actaeon and Hippolytos are two young men who, in different ways, are destroyed by their association with Artemis.
Artemis demands the sacrifice of the virgin Iphigeneia at Aulis before she will allow the Greek fleet to sail against Troy. The reasons given for her anger vary: Agamemnon kills a deer in her sacred grove (mentioned in Sophocles, Electra); or he boasts that he is a better shot than Artemis herself (Apollodorus). For the motif of Artemis' concern to protect her animals against marauding heroes see the story of Heracles and the Kerynitian hind; for the motif of mortals boasting of their superiority to the gods see the stories of Arachne, Actaeon, Marsyas, Niobe, the Lesser Ajax.
Kallisto was one of Artemis' nymphs who offended the goddess by becoming pregnant by Zeus and was banished. The jealous Hera then further punished her by turning her into a bear. The stories of Actaeon and Kallisto were known in the Renaissance through Ovid's Metamorphoses and were popular subjects for artists.
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