Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Pausanias tells that the wooden image of Artemis Orthia at Sparta was the same the Taurians held—brought by Orestes and Iphigenia as far as the Eurotas—or else found by Astrabacus and Alopechus (sons of Irbus) in a bush; when they touched it they went mad. Spartans of Limnae, Cynosura, Mesoa, and Pitane quarreled over the image and killed one another at her altar; a plague of deaths followed. An oracle bade them wet the altar with human blood. They used to sacrifice a man chosen by lot; Lycurgus replaced the killing with the scourging of youths (*diamastigosis*), so the altar still received blood without slaughter. The image was light and small; the priestess held it during the flogging, and if the beaters were mild it grew heavy, rebuking them. Orthia (also called Lygodesma, “willow-bound,” from the bush) thus joins Taurian Artemis lore to Spartan civic education through blood. Catalogue the Orthia cult-aetiology apart from the Carnea and from Euripides’ Taurian play.