Whether ‘the lady Beautiful’ is known now also in her ancient huntress-guise, is a point not readily determined. In Aetolia certainly I once or twice heard mention of her hunting on the mountains, but without feeling sure whether the word ‘hunt’ was being used literally or in metaphor. Expressions borrowed from the chase are not uncommon in the language, and the particular verb κυνηγῶ, ‘I hunt,’ is in the vernacular used of anything from rabbit-shooting to wife-beating. The injuries inflicted by Artemis on those who trespass upon her haunts might possibly be denoted by the same term. On the other hand it is not in the character of ‘the lady Beautiful,’ as it is in that of the ‘hunter’ Charos, to seek men out and slay them; men may fall chance victims to the sudden anger of the goddess, but they are the chosen quarry of the other’s prowess; he is a true ‘hunter’ of men, and, try as they will to evade him, he still pursues; but Artemis strikes none who turn aside from her path. I incline therefore to believe that the word ‘to hunt’ was intended literally when I heard it used of ‘the lady Beautiful,’ and that the ancient Artemis’ love of the chase is not forgotten by the Aetolian peasantry. Such are the reminiscences of Artemis which I have been able to gather in a few districts of modern Greece. But it is clear that down to the seventeenth century the goddess was much more widely known. Leo Allatius[423], writing about the year 1630, after giving a good description of the Nereids, plunges abruptly into a long quotation from Michael Psellus, from which and from Allatius’ own comments on it some information about the Queen of the Nereids may be gleaned. The passage in question runs as follows, the comments and explanations in brackets being my own:-- ‘ἡ καλὴ τὸν ὡραῖον. Supply ἀπέτεκεν. (Apparently a proverb, ‘Fair mother, fine son,’ to the usage of which Psellus gives some religious colour.) For the Virgin that brought forth was wonderfully fair, dazzling in the brightness of her graces, and her son was exceeding beautiful, fair beyond the sons of men. (Notwithstanding however the religious significance of the proverb, he at once condemns the use of it.) As a matter of fact, the phrase is due to faulty speech. For the popular language has perverted the saying. It is right to say καλὴν τῶν ὀρέων (‘fair lady of the mountains’); but the people have made the saying καλὴ τὸν ὡραῖον (‘fair mother, fine son’). (There is no distinction in sound, according to the modern pronunciation, between τῶν ὀρέων and τὸν ὡραῖον.) Hence we see that the popular imagination had once fashioned, quite unreasonably, a female deity whose domain was the mountains and who as it were disported herself upon them.... There is no deity called ‘fair lady of the mountains,’ nor is the so-called Barychnas a deity at all but a trouble arising in the head from heartburn or ill-digested food, ... which is also known as Ephialtes.’