With the ability to bring new life into the world, women became closely associated with the power of life and death. This generative and creative power linked women symbolically to the earth—the mother of the natural world. Ancient earth-mother deities arose from these associations, figures of immense power tied to creation.
Figures such as Gaia and Hannahanna remind us that feminine power was once foundational to humanity's understandings of creation, authority, and the natural world.
These figures include the Roman goddess Diana, who stems from the Greek deity Artemis.
Inspired by the myths detailed below surrounding Artemis—a goddess defined by her demand for independence—Fifty Hounds explores what has been lost in the modern understanding of female power.
A glimpse of Diana’s virginal body seals the fate of Actaeon, the hunter. The goddess transforms him into a stag—killed by his own fifty hounds.
“They gathered round him, and fixed their snouts deep in his flesh: tore him to pieces, he whose features only as a stag appeared.”
Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book III, trans. Brookes More (1922)
Artemis was the Olympian goddess of hunting, the wilderness, and wild animals. She was also a goddess of chastity, and the protectress of girls up until they were married.
She was identified by the Romans as Diana.
Artemis was the daughter of Zeus and Leto, and twin sister to the god of music and the sun, Apollo. At an early age, she asked her father to grant her eternal virginity and a life primarily separate from men. All of her companions were virgins, and she was normally found surrounded by nymphs, out hunting or dancing.
With the rise of feminism, Artemis has become an icon of feminine power and self-reliance.