Artemsia
ἀρτεμίσια
Artemsia (ἀρτεμίσια), great festivals celebrated in honour of Artemis in various parts of Greece, in the spring of the year. We find one mentioned at Syracuse in honour of Artemis Potamia and Soteria (Pind. P. 2.12). It lasted three days, which were principally spent in feasting and amusements (Liv. 25.23; Plut. Marc. 18). Bread was offered to her under the name of Λοξία (Hesych. sub voce). But similar festivals occur in many other places in Greece, as at Delphi, where, according to Hegesander (Athen. 7.325), they offered to the goddess a mullet on this occasion; because it appeared to hunt and kill the sea-hare, and thus bore some resemblance to Artemis, the huntress. The same name was given to the festivals of Artemis in Cyrene and Ephesus, though in the latter place the goddess was not the Grecian Artemis, but a deity of Eastern origin. (Dionys. A. R. 4.25; Achill. Tat. 6.4, 7.12, 8.17; Xenoph. Ephes. 1.2.)
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.