古希腊神话有新旧两部神谱，十二诸神是新神谱系的十二位神仙，雷神宙斯、天后赫拉、海皇波塞冬、火焰女神赫斯提亚、大地女神德墨忒尔、美神阿弗洛迪斯、太阳神阿波罗、女战神雅典娜、战神阿瑞斯、月神阿尔特弥斯、众神使者赫尔墨斯、工神赫菲斯托斯。十二个主神都有鲜明的性格与七情六欲，具有人的性格和情绪，具有超人的特殊本领。

　　阿尔忒弥斯Artemis

雅思口语素材：古希腊12主神介绍(阿尔忒弥斯)

　　阿尔忒弥斯 (希腊文 Αρτεμιδ;拉丁文 Artemis)，罗马神话中的狄安娜。掌管狩猎，照顾妇女分娩，保护反抗和蔑视爱神的青年男女。曾与孪生兄弟阿波罗一起，杀死迫害其母的巨蟒皮同和羞辱其母的尼俄柏及其子女。在土耳其以弗所，有专为她修筑的亚底米神庙。

　　Artemis was one of the most widely venerated of the Ancient Greek deities. Her Roman equivalent is Diana. Some scholars believe that the name and indeed the goddess herself was originally pre-Greek. Homer refers to her as Artemis Agrotera, Potnia Theron: "Artemis of the wildland, Mistress of Animals". TheArcadians believed she was the daughter of Demeter.

　　In the classical period of Greek mythology, Artemis (Greek: (nominative) Ἄρτεμις, (genitive)Ἀρτέμιδος) was often described as the daughter of Zeus and Leto, and the twin sister of Apollo. She was the Hellenic goddess of the hunt, wild animals, wilderness, childbirth, virginity and protector of young girls, bringing and relieving disease in women; she often was depicted as a huntress carrying a bow and arrows. The deer and the cypress were sacred to her. In later Hellenistic times, she even assumed the ancient role of Eileithyia in aiding childbirth.

　　Birth

　　Various conflicting accounts are given in Classical Greek mythology of the birth of Artemis and her twin brother, Apollo. All accounts agree, however, that she was the daughter of Zeus and Leto and that she was the twin sister of Apollo.

　　An account by Callimachus has it that Hera forbade Leto to give birth on either terra firma (the mainland) or on an island. Hera was angry with Zeus, her husband, because he had impregnated Leto. But the island of Delos (or Ortygia in the Homeric Hymn to Artemis) disobeyed Hera, and Leto gave birth there.In ancient Cretan history Leto was worshipped at Phaistos and in Cretan mythology Leto gave birth to Apollo and Artemis at the islands known today as the Paximadia.

　　A scholium of Servius on Aeneid iii. 72 accounts for the island's archaic name Ortygia by asserting that Zeus transformed Leto into a quail (ortux) in order to prevent Hera from finding out his infidelity, and Kenneth McLeish suggested further that in quail form Leto would have given birth with as few birth-pains as a mother quail suffers when it lays an egg.

　　The myths also differ as to whether Artemis was born first, or Apollo. Most stories depict Artemis as born first, becoming her mother's mid-wife upon the birth of her brother Apollo.