It is certain that many tribal worships are blended in her legend and each of two or three widely different notions of her nature may be plausibly regarded as the most primitive. In the attempt to reach the original notion of Artemis, philology offers her distracting aid and her competing etymologies. What is the radical meaning of her name? On this point Claus* has a long dissertation. In his opinion Artemis was originally (as Dione) the wife, not the daughter, of Zeus, and he examines the names Dione, Diana, concluding that Artemis, Dione and Diana are essentially one, and that Diana is the feminine of Janus (Djanus), corresponding to the Greek. As to the etymology of Artemis, Curtis wisely professes himself uncertain.** A crowd of hypotheses have been framed by more sanguine and less cautious etymologists. Artemis has been derived from "safe," "unharmed," "the stainless maiden ". Goebel,3 suggests the root _arpar_ or _par_, "to shake," and makes Artemis mean the thrower of the dart or the shooter. But this is confessedly conjectural. The Persian language has also been searched for the root of Artemis, which is compared with the first syllables in Artaphernes, Artaxerxes, Artaxata, and so forth. It is concluded that Artemis would simply mean "the great goddess ". Claus again, returning to his theory of Artemis as originally the wife of Zeus, inclines to regard her as originally the earth, the "mighty mother".**** * Roscher's Lexikon, s. v., p. 7. ** Etym. Or,, 5th ed., p. 556. *** Lexilogus, i. 554. **** For many other etymologies of Artemis, see Roscher's Lexikon, p. 558. Among these is "she who cuts the air". Even the bear, has occurred to inventive men. As Schreiber observes, the philological guesses really throw no light on the nature of Artemis. Welcker, Preller and Lauer take her for the goddess of the midnight sky, and "the light of the night".* Claus, as we have seen, is all for night, not light; for "Night is identical in conception with the earth"--night being the shadow of earth, a fact probably not known to the very early Greeks. Claus, however, seems well inspired when he refuses to deduce all the many properties, myths and attributes of Artemis from lunar aspects and attributes. The smallest grain of ingenuity will always suffice as the essential element in this mythological alchemy, this "transmutation" of the facts of legend into so many presumed statements about any given natural force or phenomenon.